The Phantom Town Mystery

The boys took turns in throwing the sand out of the crack. The faces of the three girls, standing idly near, expressed different emotions. Mary’s sweet sensitive mouth and tender eyes were wistful, almost sad. She was not thinking of the secret entrance. Dora, watching her, was troubled and wished she knew just what Mary was thinking. Etta, alone, watched the boys as they threw shovelsful of sand out of the crack. Her eyes shone with a new light. Dora, glancing at her, wondered if she were watching Jerry’s splendid strength as he hurled the sand. Once he caught her encouraging glance and smiled at her.

Etta turned and, seeing Mary beside her, she slipped an arm about her. With a fleeting return of her old seriousness, she said, “You girls can’t know what it means to me to be included in all this. I’ve been so lonely for companions of my own age.”

Mary was about to say that she was glad, also, when a shout from the boys attracted their attention. They hurried toward the crack where the three diggers stood intently examining something they had uncovered.

It was a huge stone about three feet round which leaned against a hole in the base of the cliff.

“That hole must be the secret entrance.” Dick glowed around with the pride of discovery. “The rock caught and held the sand, you see,” he explained to the girls.

“Not so fast, old man.” Harry Hulbert was measuring the space between the rock and the hole. “If Mr. Pedersen buried himself alive up there in his rock house, he had to have room to crawl into his entrance. You’ll all agree to that.”

They silently nodded, then Jerry said, “I reckon Sven Pedersen was very thin, sick as he was.”

Etta alertly suggested, “I think the hole might have been uncovered then, but that the weight of the sand has gradually pushed the rock down against the opening.”

“Righto!” Jerry’s smile was approving.

Dora remarked, “Since we are not hunting for the old man’s bones, isn’t the important question whether or not this hole leads up into the rock house?”

“And the only way to find out is to get this stone out of the way,” Dick told them. “Now everybody push.”

It was a difficult task and after what seemed a long hard effort, there was barely room for one of the boys to get in.

Jerry crawled into the hole but backed out almost at once.

“It’s black as a pocket,” he reported. “It would be foolhardy to go in until we have a light.”

“I’ll get one,” Dick volunteered. “The Deputy Sheriff has a powerful flash in his car. Back in a minute.”

While he was gone, Jerry told his impressions of the hole.

“It seems to be a slanting tunnel, not high enough to stand in. I reckon that at some past time it was made by rushing water, it’s worn so smooth.”

“Oh, Jerry, please don’t go in there all alone.” It was Mary imploring. “I’m smaller than you are. Let me go with you.”

Jerry’s grateful glance was infinitely tender and so was his voice as he replied, “Little Sister, I’ll be careful not to run into danger.”

Again he crawled into the hole. The watching young people saw the flash of the light, then they heard his voice sounding uncanny and far off. “The tunnel goes up, sort of like a waterfall. I reckon I can climb it all right, but don’t anybody try to follow me, lest-be I’m gone too long; more than fifteen minutes, say.”

The color left Mary’s face and she clung to Dora, but she tried not to let the others see how truly anxious she was.

“One minute.” Dick was looking at his watch.

Harry on his knees peered up into the darkness, but could not even see Jerry’s light.

“Five minutes,” Dick reported.

Mary asked tremulously, “That couldn’t be the cave of a mountain lion or a puma or a – ”

“Nixy on that!” Dick replied emphatically. “No wild animal, not even my friend, a Gila Monster, would care to try to climb that smooth toboggan slide. Puzzle to me is how Jerry is doing it.”

“Hark!” Mary whispered, holding up one finger. “Did you hear – ”

Dick plunged in with “a gun shot?”

“Not at all!” Mary flared at him. She ran to the hole and knelt by it and listened. “I thought I heard Jerry call far, far away,” she said as she stood up and went back to stand by Dora.

“Ten minutes.” Dick glanced from his watch to Harry. “Go back a way, will you, and look up at the rock house. If Jerry called, maybe it was from up there.”

Mary, no longer trying to hide her anxiety, ran beyond the leaning ledge and looked up. How her face shone with joy and relief!

“It’s Jerry!” she cried, beckoning the others. “He’s up there standing in the door.”

Harry cupped one hand about his ear. “What say, Jerry? All right. Sure thing.”

“What did he say?” Jerry had disappeared in the house when the others joined Mary and Harry.

“He said there’s an old wire ladder contraption that he’s going to drop down to us,” Harry explained as Jerry reappeared on the ledge. Gradually a wire-rope ladder slid down the steep cliff.

“Dick, you and Harry come on up,” Jerry called. “It’s safe all right.”

“You girls won’t mind being left alone, will you?” Harry asked in his chivalrous way, of all of them, although he looked at Mary.

“No, indeed,” she replied. “Go along.”

The boys went up the swaying ladder so easily that Mary, usually the less courageous one of the two, said to Dora, “I’m going up. Catch me if I fall.”

The three boys were in the rock house and did not know that the girls had climbed the ladder until they saw them standing near the open door.

Jerry leaped toward them. “Little Sister,” he said, “what if you had fallen?”

Dora thought complacently, “Well, I guess that lover’s misunderstanding is patched up all right. It didn’t matter, evidently, whether or not Etta fell, and as for Dora Bellman – ” she laughed and shrugged her broad, capable shoulders.

Mary was asking, “Has anyone seen the Evil Eye Turquoise?”

“Not yet. Come, let’s look for it,” the cowboy called, adding, as he turned to his neighbor, “Etta, I didn’t tell you that part of the story, did I?”

Smilingly, and evidently untroubled by the recent by-play between the cowboy and Mary, she replied in the negative. So, standing near the open door, they all told parts of the tale to the interested listener.

“But if something terrible always happens when that turquoise eye looks at an intruder,” Etta said, “aren’t you afraid something terrible will happen now?”

“I reckon I would, if I believed the yarn,” Jerry replied. “Let’s see! Where was it?”

“In the back wall, gazing straight out of the front door,” Mary reminded him.

“Well, it isn’t there now anyway.” Harry fearlessly had crossed the small bare room to investigate.

“But it must have been there,” Dick insisted. “Don’t you remember that Smart Aleky fellow who did climb up and who really did fall over the cliff, paralyzed, when he saw the Evil Eye?”