The Phantom Town Mystery

They all looked and saw a flickering light. Then Jerry, glancing up at the hanging lamp, saw that the kerosene had burned out. One more flicker and the store was in darkness. Mary screamed and clung to Jerry, but Dora, remembering her flash, turned it on.

Dick, matter-of-factly, glanced about, saw the oil can, pulled down the lamp, refilled it, and relighted it.

“Thank ye! Thank ye!” the old man said. “I reckon that’s about all thar is to hants anyhow. I never had no reason to believe in ghosts an’ ain’t a-goin’ to start in now. Wall, must yo’ be goin’? Drop in tomorrer an’ ef I kin find it, I’ll show yo’ that yellar ol’ letter Lucky Loon left fer his gal.”

CHAPTER VII

MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

It was midnight when Mary Moore awoke with a start and sat up, staring about her wild-eyed. “Where am I? Where am I?” her terrorized cry, low though it was, wakened Dora, who, sitting up, caught her friend in a close embrace.

“Mary,” she whispered reassuringly, “Mary, you’re here with me. We’re in bed in your very own room. Did you have a nightmare?”

In the dim starlight, Dora saw how pale and startled was the face of her friend. Mary’s big blue eyes looked about the room wildly as though she expected to see someone lurking in the dark corners.

“There’s no one here,” Dora assured her. “See, I’ll prove it to you.” She reached for her flash which she had left on a small table near her head. The round disc of light danced from corner to corner of the dark room. The pale blue muslin curtains, waving in the breeze at open windows, looked like ghosts, perhaps but Mary knew what they were. Still she was not satisfied.

“Dora,” she whispered, clinging to her friend’s arm, “are you sure the window at the top of the outside stairway is locked? Terribly sure?”

“Of course. I locked it the last thing, but I’ll get up and see.” Dora slipped out of bed and crossed the room. The long door-like window was securely fastened. The other two windows were open at the top only. No one could possibly have entered that way.

“Try the hall door,” Mary pleaded, “and would you mind, awfully, if I asked you to look in the clothes closet?”

Dora had no sense of fear as she was convinced that Mary had been dreaming some wild thing, and she didn’t much wonder, after the gruesome story they had heard the night before.

“Now, are you satisfied?” Dora climbed back into bed and replaced the flash on the table.

“I suppose I am.” Mary permitted herself to be covered again with the downy blue quilt. “But it did seem so terribly real, and yet, now that I come to think, it didn’t have anything at all to do with this room. We were in some bleak place I had never seen before. It was the queerest dream, Dora. In the beginning you and I went out all alone for a horseback ride. The road looked familiar enough. It was just like the road from Gleeson down to the Douglas valley highway. We were cantering along, oh, just as we have lots of times, when suddenly the scene changed – you know the way it does in dreams – and we were in the wildest kind of a mountain country. It was terrifyingly lonely. We couldn’t see anything but bleak, grim mountain ranges rising about us for miles and miles around. Some of them were so high the peaks were white with snow. I remember one peak especially. It looked like a huge woman ghost with two smaller peaks, like children ghosts, clinging to her hands.

“The sand was unearthly white and covered with human skeletons as though there had been a battle once long ago. We rode around wildly trying to find an opening so that we could escape. Then a terribly uncanny thing happened. One of those skeletons rose up right ahead of us and pointed directly toward that mountain with the three ghost-like snow-covered peaks. But our horses wouldn’t go that way, they were terrorized when they saw that hollow-eyed skeleton, waving his bony arms in front of them. They reared – then whirled around and galloped so fast we were both of us thrown off and that’s when I woke up.”

“Gracious goodness,” Dora exclaimed with a shudder. “That was a nightmare! For cricket’s sakes, let’s talk about something pleasant so that when you go to sleep again, you won’t have another such awful dream. Now, let me see, what shall we talk about?”

“Do you know, Dora,” Mary’s voice was tense with emotion, “I keep wondering and wondering about that poor Little Bodil. If she were carried off by a robber, what do you suppose he would do with her?”

“Well, it all depends on what kind of a bandit he was,” Dora said matter-of-factly. “If he were a good robber like Robin Hood, he would have sent her away to a boarding-school somewhere to be educated, since she was only ten years old. Then he would have reformed, and when she was sixteen and very beautiful with her china-blue eyes and corn-silk-yellow hair, he would have married her.”

“How I do hope something like that did happen.” Mary’s voice sounded more natural, the tenseness and terror were gone, so Dora kept on, “I think they probably bought a ranch in – er – some beautiful valley in Mexico, or some remote place where Robin Hood wouldn’t be known and lived happily ever after.”

“I wonder if they had any children.” Mary spoke as though she really believed that Dora was unraveling the mystery. “If they had a boy and a girl, suppose, they would be our age since poor Bodil would be about fifty years old now.”

Dora laughed. “Well, we probably never will know what became of that poor little Danish girl so we might as well accept my theory as any other. Let’s try to sleep now.”

Mary was silent for several moments, and Dora was just deciding that her services as a pacifier were over and that she might try to go to sleep herself, when Mary whispered, “Dodo, do you believe that story about the Evil Eye Turquoise?”

Dora sighed softly. Here was another subject with scary possibilities. “Well, not exactly,” she acknowledged. “I don’t doubt but that the thieving tenderfoot did fall over the cliff and was paralyzed, because he hit his head against a rock or something, but I think it was his own fear of the Evil Eye Turquoise which made him fall and not any demon power the eye really had.”

“Of course, that does seem sensible,” Mary agreed. Again she was quiet and this time Dora was really dozing when she heard in a shuddery voice, “Oh-oo, Dora, I do try awfully hard to keep from thinking of that poor Sven Pedersen after he’d walled himself into his tomb and lay down to die. What if he lived a long time. I’ve read about people being buried alive and – ”

“Blue Moons, Mary! What awful things you do think about!” Dora was a bit provoked. She was really sleepy, and thought she had earned a good rest for the remaining hours of the night. “Lots of animals creep away into far corners of dark caves when they know they’re going to die. That’s better than lying around helpless somewhere, and have wolves tearing you to pieces or vultures swirling around over you, dropping lower and lower, waiting for you to take your last breath. For my part, I think Sven Pedersen did a very sensible thing. In that way he was sure of a decent burial. Now, Mary dear, much as I love you, if you so much as peep again tonight, I’m going to take my pillow and go into the spare front bedroom and leave you all to your lonely.”

“Hark! What was that noise? Didn’t it sound to you like rattling bones?” Again Mary clutched her friend’s arm.

Dora gave up. “Sort of,” she agreed. “The wind is rising again.” Then she made one more desperate effort to lead Mary’s thoughts into pleasanter channels. “Wouldn’t it be great fun if Polly and Patsy could come West while we’re here?” she began. “I wonder how Jerry and Dick would like them.”

“How could anyone help liking them? Our red-headed Pat is so pert and funny, while roly-poly Poll is so altogether lovable.” Mary was actually smiling as she thought of their far away pals. Then suddenly she exclaimed, “Dora Bellman, that new friend of Pat’s, Harry Hulbert, you know; he really and truly is coming West soon, isn’t he?”

“Why, yes!” Dora was recalling what Pat had written. “Oh, Mary,” she exclaimed with new interest, “when he is a scout, hunting for bandits and train robbers and – ”

Mary sat up and seized her friend’s arm. “I know what you’re going to say,” she put in gleefully. “This Harry Hulbert may be able to help solve the mystery of Bodil’s disappearance. But that’s too much to hope.”

Dora laughingly agreed. “How wild one’s imagination is in the middle of the night,” she said.

“Middle of the night,” Mary repeated as she looked out of the nearest window. “There’s a dim light in the East and we haven’t had half of our sleep out yet.”

Long-suffering Dora thought, “That certainly isn’t my fault.” Aloud she said, “Well, let’s make up for lost time.”

She nestled down and Mary cuddled close. Sleepily she had the last word. “I hope Harry Hulbert will come, and – and – Pat – ”

At seven o’clock Carmelita’s deep, musical voice called, but there was no answer. The two sound-asleep girls had not heard. At ten o’clock they were awakened by a low whistling below their open windows.

CHAPTER VIII

SINGING COWBOYS

“What was that?” Mary sat up in bed, blinked her eyes hard to get them open, then leaped out, and, keeping hidden, peeped down into the door yard. Near the back porch stood Jerry Newcomb’s dilapidated old car, gray with sand. Two cowboys stood beside it, evidently more intent upon an examination of the machinery under the hood than they were of the house. Although they were whistling, to attract attention, they pretended to be patiently waiting. Carmelita had informed Jerry that the girls still slept.

Mary pirouetted back into the room, her blue eyes dancing. “The boys are going to take us somewhere, I’m just ever so sure,” she told the girl, who, sitting on the side of the bed, was sleepily yawning.

“Goodness, why did they come so early?” Dora asked drowsily.

“Early!” Mary laughed at her and pointed at the little blue clock on the curly maple dresser. “Dora Bellman, did you ever sleep so late before in all your life?”

“Yeah.” Dora seemed provokingly indifferent to the fact that the boys waited below, and that, perhaps, oh, ever so much more than likely, they were going adventuring. “Once, you remember that time after a school dance when the boys from the Wales Military Academy – ”

Mary skipped over to the bedside and pulled her friend to her feet. “Oh, please do hurry!” she begged. “I feel in my bones that the boys are going somewhere to try to solve the mystery and that they want to take us with them.”

Dora’s dark eyes stared stupidly, or tried hard to give that impression. “What mystery?” she asked, indifferently, as she began to dress.

“I refuse to answer.” Mary was peering into the long oval mirror brushing her short golden curls. Her lovely face was aglow with eager interest. “There is only one mystery that we are curious about as you know perfectly well and that is what became of poor Little Bodil Pedersen.”

Although Mary was looking at it, she was not even conscious of her own fair reflection. She glanced in the mirror, back at her friend, and saw her grinning in wicked glee.

Whirling, brush in hand, Mary demanded, “What is so funny, Dora? You aren’t acting a bit natural this morning. What made you grin that way?”

“I just happened to think of something. Oh, maybe it isn’t so awfully funny, but it’s sort of uncanny at that. I was thinking that, pretty as you are on the outside, you’ve got a hollow, staring-eyed skeleton inside of you and that if I had X-ray eyes – ”

Mary, with a horrified glance at her teasing friend, stuffed her fingers into her ears. “You’re terrible!” She shuddered.