The Phantom Town Mystery

“Two cowgirls are ready for a lark.
Oho-ho, so let us embark.
Come, come, coma,
Coma, coma, kee.”

Dick and Jerry sprang up and joined the chorus with:

“We’ll coma, coma, coma
With glee, glee, glee.”

CHAPTER IX

A VAGABOND FAMILY

Jerry assisted Mary up onto the front seat without question, then slipped in under the wheel. Dora climbed nimbly to her customary place in the rumble. Dick leaped in beside her. His frank, friendly smile told his pleasure in her companionship.

Dora’s happy smile, equally frank and friendly, preceded her eager question, “Where are we going, Dick? I’m bursting with curiosity. Of course I know it’s some sort of a picnic.” She nodded toward the covered hamper at their feet. “But, surely there’s more to it than just a lark. You boys wouldn’t have worked all night, if you really did, that you might just play today, would you?”

Dick leaned toward his companion and said in a low voice, “Shh! It’s a dire secret! We are on a mysterious mission bent.”

Dora laughed at his caution. “This car of Jerry’s makes so many rattling noises, we could shout and not be heard. But do stop ‘nonsensing,’ as my grandfather used to say, and reveal all.”

Dick sobered at once. “Well,” he began, “it’s this way. Last night, after we left you girls, Jerry was telling me about a family of poor squatters, as we’d call them back East. Some months ago they came from no one knows where, in an old rattletrap wagon drawn by a bony white horse. Jerry was riding fences near the highway when they passed. He said he never had seen such a forlorn looking outfit. The wagon was hung all over with pots and pans, a washtub, and, oh, you know, the absolute necessities of life. In the wagon, on the front seat, was a woman so thin and pale Jerry knew she must be almost dead with the white plague. She had a baby girl in her lap. The father, Jerry said, had a look in his eyes that would haunt the hardest-hearted criminal. It was a gentle-desperate expression, if you get what I mean. Two boys about ten sat in the back of the wagon, hollow-eyed skeletons, covered with sickly yellow skin, while seated on a low chair in the wagon was an older girl staring straight ahead of her in a wild sort of a way.”

“The poor things!” Dora exclaimed when Dick paused. “What became of them?”

“Well, the outfit stopped near where Jerry was riding and the man hailed him. ‘Friend,’ he called, ‘is there anywhere we could get water for our horse? It’s most petered out.’

“Jerry told them that about a mile, straight ahead, they would find a side road leading toward the mountains. If they would turn there, they would come to a rushing stream. They could have all the water they wished. And then, Jerry said, feeling so terribly sorry for them, he added on an impulse, ‘There’s a herder’s shack close by. Stay all night in it if you want. It’s my father’s land and you’re welcome.’”

Dora turned an eager face toward the speaker. “Dick,” she said, “I believe I can tell you what happened next. That poor family stayed all night in that herder’s shack and they never left.”

Dick nodded. “Are you a mind reader?” he asked, his big, dark eyes smiling at her through the shell-rimmed glasses.

“No-o. I don’t believe that I am.” Then eagerly, “But do tell me what possible connection that poor family can have with this expedition of ours.”

“Isn’t that like a girl?” Dick teased. “You want to hear the last chapter, before you know what happened to lead up to it. I’ll return to the morning after. Jerry said he had thought of the family all the afternoon, and that night when he got home, he told his mother, who, as you know, has a heart of gold.”

“Oh, Dick!” Dora interrupted. “Gold may be precious, but it isn’t as tender and kind, always, as the heart of Jerry’s mother.”

“Be that as it may,” the boy continued, “Mrs. Newcomb packed a hamper – this very one now reposing at our feet, I suppose – with all manner of good things and she had Jerry harness up as soon as he’d eaten and take her to call on their unexpected guests. They found the woman lying on the one mattress, coughing pitifully, and the others gazing at her, the little ones frightened, and huddled, the older girl on her knees rubbing her mother’s hands. The father stood looking down with such despair in his eyes, Mrs. Newcomb said, as she had never before seen.

“‘There’d ought to be a doctor here,’ she said at once, but the woman on the mattress smiled up at her feebly and shook her head. ‘I’m going on now,’ she said in a low voice, ‘and I’d go on gladly, – I’m so tired – if I knew my children had a roof over their heads and – and – ,’ then a fit of coughing came. When it passed, the woman lay looking up at Jerry’s mother, her dim eyes pleading, and Mrs. Newcomb knelt beside her and took her almost lifeless hand and said, ‘Do not worry, dear friend, your children shall have a roof over their heads and food.’ Then the mother smiled at her loved ones, closed her eyes and went on.”

There were tears in Dora’s eyes, and she frankly wiped them away with her handkerchief. Unashamed, Dick said, “That’s just how I felt when Jerry told me about the Dooleys. That’s their name. Of course, Mrs. Newcomb kept her word. That little shack is in a lovely spot near the stream with big cottonwood trees around it. After the funeral, Mr. Newcomb told the father that he and the boys could cut down some of the small cottonwoods upstream, leaving every third one, and build another room, so they put up a lean-to. Then he gave them a cow to milk and the boys started a vegetable garden. Mr. Dooley does odd jobs on the ranch, though he isn’t strong enough for hard riding, and the girl Etta mothers the baby and the little boys.”

“Have we reached that last chapter?” Dora asked. “The one I was trying to hear before we got to it? In other words, may I now know how this terribly tragic story links up with our today’s adventuring?”

“You sure may,” Dick said. “It’s this way. The Newcombs, generous as they have been, can’t afford to keep those children clothed and fed. Moreover they ought to go to school next fall and between now and then, some money must be found and so – ”

“Oh! Oh! I see!” Dora glowed at him. “Jerry thinks that it is a cruel shame to have this poor family in desperate need when Mr. Lucky Loon has a tomb full of gold helping no one.”

Dick smiled. “Now I’m sure you’re a mind reader. Although,” he corrected, “Jerry didn’t just put it that way. But what he did say was that if we could find out definitely that Bodil Pedersen is dead and that there is no one else to claim that buried treasure, perhaps the old storekeeper, Mr. Silas Harvey, might give us the letter he has, telling where it is hidden.”

“Did Jerry think the money might be used for that poor family?” Dora asked.

Dick nodded. “He did, if Mr. Harvey consented. Jerry feels, and so do I, that if Bodil Pedersen hasn’t turned up in thirty years, she probably never will. Of course it would be by the merest chance that she would drift into this isolated mountain town, anyway, even if she is alive, which Jerry thinks is very doubtful.”

Dora was thoughtful for a moment. “Did Mr. Pedersen advertise in the papers for his lost sister?”

“We wondered about that and this morning we asked Mr. Newcomb. He said he distinctly remembered the story in the Douglas paper, and that afterwards it was copied all over the state.”

“Goodness!” Dora suddenly ejaculated as she glanced about her. “I’ve been so terribly interested in that poor family, I hardly noticed where we were going. We’ve crossed the desert road and here we are right at the mountains.”

“How bleak and grim this range is,” Dick said, then, turning to look back across the desert valley to a low wooded range in the purple distance, he added, “Those mountains across there, where the Newcomb ranch is, are lots more friendly and likeable, aren’t they? They seem to have pleasant things to tell about their past, but these mountains – ” the boy paused.

“Oh, I know.” Dora actually shuddered. “These seem cruel as though they wanted people who tried to cross over them to die of thirst, or to be hurled over their precipices, or – ” suddenly her tone became one of alarm. “Dick, did you know we were going up into these awful mountains?”

Her companion nodded, his expression serious. “Yes, I knew it,” he confessed, “but I also know that Jerry wouldn’t take us up here if he weren’t sure that we’d be safe.”

“Of course,” Dora agreed, “but wow! isn’t the road narrow and rutty, and are we going straight up?”

Dick laughed, for the girl, unconsciously, had clutched his khaki-covered arm. “If those are questions needing answers,” he replied, “I’ll say, Believe me, yes. Ha, here’s a place wide enough for a car to pass. Jerry’s stopping.”

When the rattling of the little old car was stilled, Jerry and Mary turned and smiled back at the other two. “Don’t be scared, Dora,” Mary called. “Jerry says that no one ever crosses this old road now. It’s been abandoned since the valley highway was built.”

“That’s right!” The cowboy’s cheerful voice assured the two in back that he was in no way alarmed. “I reckoned we’d let our ‘tin Cayuse’ rest a bit and get his breath before we do the cliff-climbing stunt that’s waitin’ us just around this curve.”

Dora thought, “Mary’s just as scared as I am. I know she is. She’s white as a ghost, but she doesn’t want Jerry to think she doesn’t trust him to take care of her.”

Dick broke in with, “Say, when does this outfit eat?”

“Fine idea!” Jerry agreed heartily. “Dora, open up the grub box and hand it around, will you? I reckon we’ll need fortifyin’ for what’s going to happen next.”

CHAPTER X

A LONELY MOUNTAIN ROAD

While the four young people ate the delicious chicken sandwiches which Mrs. Newcomb had prepared for them and drank creamy milk poured into aluminum cups from a big thermos bottle, they sat gazing silently about them, awed by the terrific majesty of the scene, the girls not entirely unafraid. Below them was a sheer drop of hundreds of feet to a desert floor which was most uneven, having been cut up by torrents, which, during each heavy rain, were hurled down the mountain sides.

The effect of the desert for miles beyond was that of a little “Grand Canyon.” Dora, thoughtfully gazing at it, said, – “In a few centuries, other girls and boys will stand here, perhaps, and by that time those canyons will be worn deep as the real Grand Canyon is today, won’t they, Jerry?”

“I reckon that’s right,” the cowboy replied.

Then Mary asked, “Jerry, is this old dangerous mountain road the very same one that the stages used to cross years ago?”

Jerry nodded, but before he could speak, Mary, shining-eyed, rushed on with, “Oh, Dora, I know why the boys have brought us here! This is the road where the three bandits held up the stage that Sven Pedersen and poor Little Bodil were riding in.”

“Of course it is!” Dora generously refrained from telling her friend that she had been convinced of that fact ever since they began climbing the grade.