The Phantom Town Mystery

“My dear, my dear,” she said tenderly, “how glad I am that you blew over to Bar N.”

“We almost literally did blow over,” Mary laughingly replied. “That is, we were running away from a sand storm.” Then, suddenly serious, she asked, “Oh, Aunt Molly, may I use your telephone at once? Dad doesn’t know that I’m here and he will be expecting us back for supper.”

“Of course, dear. You know where it is, in the living-room.” Then, when Mary had skipped away, Dora following her, Mrs. Newcomb asked, “Has there been a sand storm in the valley? I hadn’t heard about it.”

Jerry was about to drive the small car around to the old barn and so Dick replied, “Yes, Mrs. Newcomb. That’s what Jerry called it. We first saw it on the other side of the range back of Gleeson. Later we saw it far away to the south. It didn’t cross this part of the valley at all, but Jerry thought we’d better not try the Gleeson road.”

“He was wise. I hope the wires aren’t down.”

The good woman’s anxiety was quickly ended by the reappearance of the girls. “All’s well!” Mary announced. Then to Dick, “Your mother answered the phone. She said that they had heard the roaring and had seen some dust in the air but that the storm had passed around our tableland.”

“Well, you girls had quite an adventure and perhaps a narrow escape as well.” Little did Mrs. Newcomb realize that she was repeating the phrase they had so often used that day. “Now, Mary, you take your friend to the spare room and get ready for supper. Your Uncle Henry will be in from riding the range pronto, and starved as a lean wolf, no doubt. He’s been gone since sun-up and he won’t take along what he ought for his mid-lunch.”

The girls were about to leave the kitchen when Jerry called to Dick and away he went into the gathering darkness.

“The boys sleep in the bunk house out by the corral,” Mrs. Newcomb explained. “They’ll be back, I reckon, soon as you’re ready.”

The spare room was large, square, with a small fireplace in it. The bed was an old-fashioned four-poster and looked luxuriously comfortable.

A table, a dresser, two chairs of dark wood and a bright rag rug completed the furnishings.

“How quiet it is,” Mary said. “There isn’t a neighbor nearer than those Dooleys and Jerry said they are way over in the canyon.”

Dora, wondering if Mary could be contented if she became Jerry’s wife, some day in the future, asked, “Would you like to live on a ranch, do you think?”

Innocently, Mary replied as she lighted the kerosene lamp on the bureau, “Why, yes, I’m sure I would, if Dad could be with me.”

Dora sighed as she thought, “Poor Jerry. She’s still blind and I did think today that her eyes were opened.”

CHAPTER XV

IN THE BARN LOFT

“Jerry, what did you do with the box?” Mary managed to whisper as the cowboy drew out a chair for her at the supper table.

“In the old barn loft, snug and safe,” he replied. Then he sat beside her. Dora and Dick, on the opposite side of the long table, beamed across, eager anticipation in their eyes. Although they had not heard the few words their friends had spoken, they felt sure that they had been about Little Bodil’s box.

“We won’t wait for your father, Jerry,” Mrs. Newcomb had said. “He may have gone in somewhere for shelter if he happened to be riding in the path of the storm.”

The kerosene lamp hanging above the middle of the table had a cherry-colored shade and cast a cheerful glow over the simple meal of warmed-over chicken, baked potatoes, corn bread, sage honey and creamy milk, big pitchers of it, one at each end of the table. For dessert there was apple sauce and chocolate layer cake.

Mr. Newcomb came in before they were through, tall, sinewy, his kind brown face deeply furrowed by wind and sun. His eyes brightened with real pleasure when he saw the guests. Dora, he had met before, and Mary he had known since she was a little girl.

He shook hands with both of them. “Wall, wall, if that sand storm sent you girls this-a-way, I figger it did some good after all.”

Jerry glanced at his father anxiously when he was seated at the end of the table opposite his wife.

“Dad, do you reckon any of our cattle were hit by it?” he asked.

The older man helped himself to the food Mary passed him, before he replied, “No-o, I reckon not. I was riding the high pasture when I heerd the roaring. I went out on Lookout Point and stood there watching, till the dust got so thick I had to make for the canyon.”

It was Dick who spoke. “There aren’t many cows pastured down on the floor of the valley, anyway, are there, Mr. Newcomb? There’s so much sand and only an occasional clump of grass, it surely isn’t good pasture.”

“You’re right,” the cowman agreed, “but there’s a few poor men struggling along, tryin’ to eke out an existence down thar. I reckon they was hit hard. I knew a man, once, who had a well and was tryin’ to raise a garden. One of them sand storms swooped over it, and, after it was gone, he couldn’t find nary a vegetable. Either they’d been pulled up by the roots and blown away or else they was buried so deep, he couldn’t dig down to them.”

“Oh, Uncle Henry,” Mary smiled toward him brightly, “I see a twinkle in your eye. Now confess, isn’t that a sand-story?”

“No, it’s true enough,” the cowman replied, when Jerry exclaimed: “Dad, I know a bigger one than that. You remember that man from the East, tenderfoot if ever there was one, who started to build him a house on the Neal crossroad? He heard the storm coming so he jumped on his horse and rode into Neal as though demons were after him. When the wind stopped blowing, he went back to look for his house and there, where it had been, stood the beginning of a sand hill. The adobe walls of his unfinished house had caught so much sand, they were completely covered. That was years ago. Now there’s a good-sized sand hill on that very spot with yucca growing on it.”

“Poor man, it was the burial of his dreams,” Dora said sympathetically.

“He left for the East the next day,” Jerry finished his tale, “and – ”

“Lived happily ever after, I hope,” Mary put in.

Mrs. Newcomb said pleasantly, “If you young people have finished your meal, don’t wait for us. Jerry told me you’re going out to the loft in the old barn for a secret meeting about something.”

“We’d like to help you, Aunt Mollie, if – ”

“No ‘ifs’ to it, Mary dear.” The older woman gazed lovingly at the girl. “Your Uncle Henry and I visit quite a long spell evenings over our tea. It’s the only leisure time that we have together.”

Jerry lighted a couple of lanterns, and the girls, after having gone to their room for their sweater coats, joined the boys on the wide, back, screened-in porch.

“I’ll go ahead,” Jerry said, “and Dick will bring up the rear. We’ll be the lantern bearers. Now, don’t you girls leave the path.”

“Why all the precautions?” Dora asked gaily, but Mary knew.

“Rattlesnakes may be abroad.” She shuddered. “Have you seen one yet this summer, Jerry?”

“Yes, this morning, and a mighty ugly one too; coiled up asleep in the chicken yard. I shot it, all right, but didn’t kill it. Before I could fire again, it had crawled under the old barn.”

“Oh-oo gracious! That’s where we’re going, isn’t it?” Dora peered into the darkness on either side of the path.

“I suppose it had a mate equally big and ugly under the barn?” Mary’s statement was also a question.

Dick replied, “Undoubtedly, but if they stay under the barn and don’t try to climb up to the loft, they won’t trouble us any.”

Mary, glancing up at the sky that was like soft, dark blue velvet studded with luminous stars, exclaimed, “How wonderfully clear the air is, and how still. You never would dream that a sand storm had – ”

She stopped suddenly, for Dora had gripped her arm from the back. “Listen! Didn’t you hear a – ”

“Gun shot?” Dick supplied gaily. “Now that we’re about to open up Little Bodil’s box, I certainly expect to hear one. You know we heard a gun fired, or thought we did, when we passed through the gate in front of Lucky Loon’s rock house, and again when old Silas Harvey was telling us the story. Was that what you thought you heard, Dora?”

“No, it was not,” that maiden replied indignantly. “I thought I heard a rattle.” She had stopped still in the path to listen, but, as Jerry and Mary had continued walking toward the old barn, Dora decided that she had been mistaken and skipped along to catch up. Dick, sorry that he had teased her, evidently at an inopportune time, ran after her with the lantern. “Please forgive me,” he pleaded, “and don’t rush along that way where the path is dark.”

Jerry turned to call, “We’re going in the side door, Dick.” Then anxiously, “You girls can climb a wall ladder, can’t you?”

“Of course we can,” Dora replied spiritedly. “We’re regular acrobats in our gym at school.”