The Phantom Town Mystery

The front door stood open but no one was in sight. Mary and Dora, leaving the road, turned their horses toward the small house.

“I feel sort of queer,” Mary said, “sort of story-bookish – coming to call on a strange girl in this romantic canyon and – ”

“Sh-ss!” Dora warned. “Someone’s coming to the door.”

CHAPTER XVIII

A STRANGE HOSTESS

Etta Dooley, evidently unused to receiving calls, stood in the open door, her rather sad mouth and her fine hazel eyes unsmiling. Her plain brown cloth dress hid the graceful lines of her young form. She was wondering and waiting.

Mary and Dora dismounted, and, as the red-headed, ten-year-old twins had come pell-mell from the garden, Mary, smiling down at them in her captivating way, asked them not to let the horses wander far from the house. Then, with the same irresistible smile, she approached the still silent, solemn girl.

“Good morning, Etta,” Mary said brightly, pretending not to notice the other girl’s rather disconcerting gaze. “We are friends of Mrs. Newcomb, and she wanted us to become acquainted with you. I am Mary Moore. I live in Gleeson across the valley and Dora Bellman is my best friend from the East.”

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.