The Phantom Town Mystery

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 open 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.