Norton Carol
The Phantom Town Mystery
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.
Dora contritely caught Mary’s hands and drew them down.
“Belovedest,” she exclaimed, “I’m just as thrilled as you are at the prospect of going buggy riding with two nice cowboys whether we find poor Little lost Bodil (who is probably a fat old woman now) or solve any other mystery that may be lying around loose.”
Mary was still pouting. “It doesn’t sound a bit like you to pretend – ”
Dora rushed in with, “That’s all it is, believe me! There, now I’m dressed, all but topping off. What do you think we’d better wear?”
“Let’s put on our kimonas until we find out where we’re going, then we’ll know better what to wear. Jerry may have an errand over in Douglas and, if so, we’d want to dress up.”
Mary’s Japanese kimona was one of her treasures. It was heavy blue silk with flowers of gold trailing all over it. Dora’s laughing, olive-tinted face reflected a glow from her cherry-colored silk kimona with its border of white chrysanthemums.
Carmelita, who was in the act of reheating the breakfast for the girls, who she felt sure would soon be coming, stared at them open-eyed and mouthed when she saw them tripping through the kitchen.
In very uncertain Spanish they called “Good morning” to her, then burst upon the boys’ astonished vision.
Dick, snatching off his sombrero, held it to his heart while he made a deep bow. Jerry, bounding forward, caught Mary’s two small hands in his. Then he held her from him as he looked at her with the same reverent admiration that he would have given a rarely lovely picture.
“I don’t know a word of Japanese,” Dick despaired, “so how can I make my meaning clear?” His big, dark eyes smiled at Dora, who gaily retorted, “We didn’t know that our prize costumes would strike you boys dumb. If we had, we wouldn’t have worn them, would we, Mary?”
“I’ll say not,” that little maid replied. “We’re wild to know why you’ve come when you should be roping steers or mending fences, if that is what cowboys do in the middle of the morning.”
“Oh, we’re going to explain our presence all right. We made it up while we came along – ” Dick began, when Jerry interrupted with, “You girls have heard range-ridin’ songs, I reckon, haven’t you?”
“Oh, no,” they said together.
“That is, not real ones,” Dora explained. “We’ve heard them in the talkies.”
“Well, this is a real one all right. Just fresh from the – er – ” Dick glanced sideways at Jerry who began in a low sing-song voice:
“Two cowboys in the middle of the night,”
Dick joined in:
“Did their work and they did it right.
Come, come, coma,
Coma, coma, kee.
Coma, coma, coma,
Kee, kee, kee.”
“That,” said Dick with a flourish of the hand which still held his sombrero, “is why we have time to play today.”
The girls had been appreciative listeners. “Oh, isn’t there any more to it?” Dora cried “I thought cowboy songs went on and on; forty verses or more.”
“So they do!” Jerry agreed. “But I reckon this one is too new to be that long, but there is another verse,” he acknowledged.
Then in a rollicking way they sang:
“Two cowboys who were jolly and gay
Wished to go adventuring the next day.
Come, come, coma,
Coma, coma, kee.
Coma, coma, coma,
Kee, kee, kee.”
Then, acting out the words by a little strutting, they sang lustily:
“Two cowboys who were brave and bold
Took two girls in a rattletrap old.
Come, come, coma,
Coma, coma, kee.
And that’s all of it
If you’ll come with me.”
Dick bowed to Dora and Jerry beamed upon Mary.
“Oh, Happy Days! We’re keen to go,” Dora told them, “but where?”
The answer was another sing-song:
“The two cowboys were on mystery bent.
They went somewhere, but you’ll know where they went
If you’ll come, come, coma,
Come in our old ’bus,
Come, come, coma,
Come with us.”
Carmelita, who had appeared in the kitchen door, started chattering in Spanish and Jerry laughingly translated, rather freely, and not quite as the truly deferential cook had intended. “Carmelita asks me to tell you girls that she has reheated your breakfast for the last time and that if you don’t come in now and eat it, she’s going to give it to the cat.”
“Oho!” Mary pointed an accusing finger at him. “I know you are making it up. Carmelita wouldn’t have said that, because there is no cat.” Then graciously, she added, “Won’t you singing cowboys come in and have a cup of coffee, if there is any?”
Jerry asked Carmelita if there was enough of a snack for two starved cowboys who had breakfasted at daybreak and that good-natured Mexican woman declared that there was batter enough to make stacks more cakes if Jerry wanted to fry them. She had butter to churn down in the cooling cellar.
Mary insisted that she be the one to fry the cakes, but Jerry and Dick insisted equally, that she should not, dressed up like a Japanese princess.
“Grease spatters wouldn’t look well tangled up in that gold vine,” Jerry told her.
With skill and despatch, Jerry flipped cakes and Dick served them. Then, while the girls went upstairs to don their hiking suits with the short divided skirts, the boys ate small mountains of the cakes.
“Verse five!” Dick mumbled with his mouth full.
“Two cowboys with a big appetite
They could eat flapjacks all day and all night.
Come, come, coma,
Coma, coma, kee.
Those cowboys, Jerry,
Are You and me.”
Back of them a laughing voice chanted, “Verse six.”
“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.”
