The Phantom Town Mystery

“Well, I’ll lie down,” Mary was removing her shoes as she spoke, “but I don’t expect to sleep a wink.”

They removed their outer clothing, then drew a quilt up over them. The boys from the pool room had crossed to hear the news and many of them returned to their homes with their mothers. They evidently believed implicitly that all of the bandits had been captured and so they had nothing to fear.

The humming of voices in the office was stilled and soon there were no sounds in the street below.

Dora, no longer anxious, went to sleep quickly and although Mary had been sure she wouldn’t sleep at all, at daybreak they neither of them heard the men returning. It was hours later when there came a rap on their door. Mary sat up looking about wildly. “Who’s there?” she called, almost fearfully, then remembering that all was well, she jumped up and opened the door a crack. Mrs. Goode smiled in at her. “Dearie,” she said, “Jerry sent me up to ask if you girls will come down to breakfast now.”

“Of course we will. Thanks a lot.” Still Dora slept on. Mary shook her laughingly as she said, “Wake up, Dodo! The hour is here at last when we are to meet Pat’s aviator.”

Dora sprang out of bed and hurriedly dressed. “I feel in my bones,” she prophesied, “that you and I will share in some excitement today. See if we don’t!”

CHAPTER XXV

A CRY FOR HELP

The three boys glanced toward the stairway as the girls descended. Dick advanced to meet them, then introduced the tall, lithe young stranger as the “hero of the hour.”

Harry Hulbert’s rather greenish-blue eyes had a humorous twinkle which softened their keenness. He looked down at the girls with sincere pleasure in his rather thin face.

“This is great!” he exclaimed. “I’ve heard so much about you from your friends Patsy and Polly that I feel well acquainted with both Miss Moore and Miss Bellman.”

“Oh, don’t ‘Miss’ us, please!” Dora begged. “It makes me feel old as the hills.”

“Then I won’t until I’m far away,” he replied gallantly. “I’m really awfully glad to be able to say Mary and Dora.”

Harry’s glance at the fairer, younger girl was undeniably admiring and Dora thought, “I wonder if he knows that Pat has given him to Mary. Poor Jerry, he looks sort of miserable.” Aloud Dora exclaimed, “Dick, do lead us to the dining-room. I’m famished.”

The cafe was in a low, adjoining building. There had been no pretense at beautifying the place. It was plain and bare but clean and sun-flooded.

It was late and whoever may have breakfasted there had long since gone so the young people had the place to themselves. They chose a table for six though there were but five of them. Harry was at one end with Mary at his right. He had led her to that place without question. Dick escorted Dora to the opposite end and sat beside her. Jerry took the seat across from Mary, at Harry’s left.

“He’s a trump!” Dora thought as she noted how unselfishly Jerry played the gracious host.

Mrs. Goode took their order, and Washita silently, and, with what to Mary seemed like stealthy movements, served it.

While they were eating, the curious girls begged to hear all that had happened, but Dick said, “Why drag it out? Harry saw and we all conquered. Not a gun was fired, not a drop of blood was spilled. The bags of ore were discovered and are now locked up in the cellar of the jail.”

“Oh, Jerry,” Mary exclaimed instinctively turning to her older acquaintance, “how can you be sure that the bandits were all captured? Couldn’t one or two of them have been away scouting or something?”

“That we can’t tell for sure, of course, but I reckon we got them all.” Then turning to Dick, he added, “We’d better be getting back to Bar N soon as we can.”

Mary, flushed and shining-eyed, leaned toward the young aviator. “You’re going to fly over to Gleeson, aren’t you, so that we may get really acquainted?”

“I’d like to, awfully well, but Jerry tells me that there isn’t a safe landing anywhere for miles around.”

“Aha,” Dora thought, “Jerry scores there.” But she was wrong, for the cowboy was saying generously, “I’m sure Deputy Sheriff Goode will loan you a car. He has two little ones besides the town ambulance. I’d ask you to ride with us but my rattletrap will only hold four.”

Jerry’s suggestion was carried out. Deputy Sheriff Goode had a small car he was glad to loan to Harry. The proprietor of the pool hall agreed to watch the “Seagull” and warn all curious boys to stay away from it.

“I won’t be able to stay long,” Harry told them. “I’ll have to fly back to headquarters in Tucson this afternoon to report.” Then, glancing at Mary, invitation in his eyes, he asked, “Must I ride all alone in this borrowed flivver?”

“Of course not! I’ll ride with you if the others are willing. I mean,” Mary actually blushed in her confusion, “if you would like to have me.”

For answer Harry took her arm and led her across to the small car which stood waiting in front of the hotel. “We’ll follow where you lead, Jerry,” he called to the cowboy.

“Righto!”

Since Dora was already in the rumble, Dick climbed in beside her and Jerry started his small car and turned toward the valley road. Dora said not one word but the glance her dark eyes gave her companion spoke volumes. His equally silent reply was understanding and eloquent.

Harry had a moment’s difficulty in starting his borrowed car and they did not overtake the others until they were out of the town and about to dip down into the desert valley. Then, when Jerry’s car was not far ahead, the young aviator slowed down and smiled at Mary in the friendliest way.

“So this is actually you,” he said. His tone inferred that it was hard to believe. “Pat had a picture of you in a fluffy white dress. That photographer was an artist all right. He caught the sunlight on your hair so that, to me, you looked, honestly, just like an angel from heaven come down. I thought the girl who had posed for that picture must be the earth’s sweetest.”

Wild roses could not have been pinker than Mary’s cheeks. She protested, “You mustn’t flatter me that way. I might believe it.”

“I rather hoped you would believe it,” the boy said earnestly, then abruptly he changed the subject. “This is a great country, isn’t it? And to think that you were born here. It’s all so rough and rugged, it’s hard to picture a frail flower – ”

Mary laughingly interrupted. “You should see the exquisite blossoms that grow on a thorny cactus plant,” she told him. Then, seeing that Jerry had stopped his car and was waiting for them to come alongside, she exclaimed, “I wonder what Big Brother wants. We’re close to the side road, aren’t we, where you turned last night when you went over to ‘The Dragoons?’”

“I believe we are,” Harry replied absently, then asked, “Why do you call Jerry Newcomb ‘Big Brother?’”

“Oh, because we were playmates years ago when we were small and I’ve always called his mother ‘Aunt Mollie.’ He takes good care of me just like a real brother,” she ended rather lamely.

Harry was bringing his small car to a standstill near the other. He leaned close to Mary and said in a low voice, “I’m glad it’s only brother.”

Although the occupants of the other car could not hear the words, they had seen the almost affectionate way in which the words had been spoken.

Dora thought, “Aviators are evidently lightning workers.”

Jerry’s expression did not reveal his thoughts. He spoke to both Dick and Harry. “I did something last night, I reckon, I never did before. I laid my six shooter down on a rock and in all the excitement I plumb forgot it. Would you mind if we went up this road a piece – ”

“Oh, Jerry,” Dora cried, “can’t we go with you all the way and see where you found the bandits?” Then, as the cowboy hesitated, Dick said, “I think it would be perfectly safe to go, don’t you?”

“I reckon so.” Jerry was about to start his car when Mary called, “Jerry Newcomb, I never once thought to ask you or Dick if there were any old men among those bandits, I mean, any who might have been the ones who held up the stage and kidnapped Little Bodil.”

Jerry replied, “I reckon not. They were too young.” Then he turned his car into the side road.

Harry, following, exclaimed, “What’s all this about a kidnapping? It sounds interesting.”

Mary was glad to have something to talk about which could not possibly suggest a compliment to her. She found it embarrassing to be so much admired by a boy who was almost a stranger to her. She told the story briefly, but from the beginning, and Harry was an appreciative listener. “That’s a bang-up good mystery yarn!” he said. “I’d like mighty well to be along when Jerry and Dick climb up into that rock house. Gruesome, isn’t it, knowing that the old duffer buried himself alive? Clever, that’s what he was, to make up a yarn about an Evil Eye Turquoise that would keep thieves all these years away from his gold.”

The side road into the mountains was in worse condition than the one they had left, and so, for some moments, Harry was silent that he might give all his attention to guiding the car over an especially dangerous spot. Then he turned and smiled at Mary. “And so you had hoped that one of those bandits who were captured last night might have been Bodil’s kidnapper. That would hardly be possible. Such things don’t happen in real life and, also, as you say, the little girl may have been dragged away to the lair of a mountain lion.”

Mary’s attention had been attracted by the car ahead. “Jerry’s stopping again,” she said.

Harry put on the brakes. The cowboy had leaped out and was coming back toward them. “I don’t believe we’d better try to go any further along this road,” he told them. “Harry, if you will stay with the girls, Dick and I will – ”

“Hark, Big Brother, what was that?” Mary held up a finger and listened intently. On their left was a deep brush-tangled arroyo. They all heard distinctly a low moan that seemed to form the word “Help.”