we were there, he won’t ever take us there again and he probably won’t tell us the story either.”
“Then I’ll find it out some other way,” Dora declared. “I’m crazy about mysteries as you know, and, if there really is one about that rock house, I want to try to solve it.”
She said no more about it just then, as they had reached the old ghost town of Gleeson. They turned up a side street toward mountain peaks that were about a mile away. On their right was the corner general store and post office. A crumbling old adobe building it was, with a rotting wooden porch, on which stood a row of armchairs. In the long ago days when the town had been teeming with life, picturesque looking miners and ranchers had sat there tilted back, smoking pipes and swapping yarns. Today the chairs were empty.
An old man, shriveled, gray-bearded, unkempt, but with kind gray eyes, deep-sunken under shaggy brows, stood in the open door. He smiled out at them in a friendly way, then beckoned with a bony finger.
“I do believe Mr. Harvey has a letter for us,” Dora said.
The old man had shuffled into the dark well of his store. A moment later he reappeared with several letters and a newspaper.
“Good!” Dora exclaimed as she rode close to the porch. “Thanks a lot,” she called brightly up to the old man who was handing the packet down over the sagging wooden rail.
His friendly, toothless smile was directed at the smaller girl. “Heerd tell as how yer pa’s sittin’ up agin, Miss Mary,” he said. “Mis’ Farley, yer nurse woman, came down ter mail some letters a spell back.” Then, before Mary could reply, he continued in his shrill, wavering voice, “That thar pale fellar wi’ specs on is her son, ain’t he?”
“Yes, Mr. Harvey. Dick is Mrs. Farley’s son.” Mary took time, in a friendly way, to satisfy the old man’s curiosity. “Dick has been going to the Arizona State University this winter to be near his mother. She’s a widow and he’s her only son. Her husband was a doctor and they lived back in Boston before he died.”
“Dew tell!” the old man wagged his head sympathetically. “I seen the young fellar ridin’ around wi’ Jerry Newcomb.”
“Dick’s working on the Newcomb ranch this summer,” Mary said, as she started to ride on.
“Ho! Ho!” the old man cackled. “Tenderfoot if ever thar was un. What’s Jerry reckonin’ that young fellar kin do? Bustin’ broncs?”
Mary smiled in appreciation of the old man’s joke. “No, Jerry won’t expect Dick to do that right at first. He’s official fence-mender just at present.”
Dora defended the absent boy. “Mr. Harvey, you wait until Dick has been on the desert long enough to get a coat of tan; he may surprise you.”
“Wall, mabbe! mabbe!” the old storekeeper chuckled to himself as the girls, waving back at him, galloped away up the road in the little dead town.
On either side there were deserted adobe houses in varying degrees of ruin, some with broken windows and doors, others with sagging roofs and crumbling walls.
The only sign of life was in three small adobes where poor Mexican families lived. Broken windows in two of the houses were stuffed with rags; the door yards were littered with rubbish. Unkempt children played in front of the middle house. The third adobe was neat and well kept. In it lived the Lopez family. Carmelita, the wife and mother, had long been cook for Mary Moore’s father.
A bright, black-eyed Mexican boy of about ten ran out to the road as the girls approached. “Come on, Emanuel,” Mary sang down to him. “You may put up our horses and earn a dime.”
The small boy’s white teeth flashed in a delighted grin. His brown feet raced so fast, that, by the time the girls were dismounting before the big square two-storied adobe near the mountains, Emanuel was there to lead their horses around back.
Mary glanced affectionately at the old place with its flower-edged walk, its broad porch and adobe pillars. Here her mother had come as a bride; here Mary had been born. Eight happy years they had spent together before her mother died. After Mary had been taken East to school, her father had returned, and here he had spent the winters, going back to Sunnybank each summer to be with his little girl.
Hurrying up the steps, Mary skipped into a pleasant living-room, where, near a wide window that was letting in a flood of light from the setting sun, sat her fine-looking father, pale after his long illness, but growing stronger every day.
“Oh, Daddy dear!” Mary’s voice was vibrant with love. “You’ve waited up for me, haven’t you?” She dropped to her knees beside the invalid chair and pressed her flushed face to his gray, drawn cheek.
Then, glancing up at the nurse who had appeared from her father’s bedroom, she asked eagerly, “May I tell Dad an adventure we’ve had?”
Mrs. Farley, middle-aged, kind-faced, shook her head, smiling down at the girl. “Not tonight, please. Won’t tomorrow do?”
Mary sprang up, saying brightly, “I reckon it will have to.” Then, stooping, she kissed her father as she whispered tenderly, “Rest well, darling. We’re hoping you know all about – ” then, little girl fashion, she clapped her hand on her mouth, mumbling, “Oh, I most disobeyed and told our adventure. See you tomorrow, Daddy.”
CHAPTER III
THE MISSING FRIENDS
Upstairs, in Mary’s room which was furnished as it had been when she had been there as a child, curly maple set with blue hangings, the two girls changed from riding habits to house dresses. Mary wore a softly clinging blue while Dora donned her favorite and most becoming cherry color.
“One might think that we are expecting company tonight.” Mary was peering into the oval glass as she spoke, arranging her fascinating golden curls above small shell-like ears.
“Which, of course, we are not.” Dora had brushed her black bob, boy-fashion, slick to her head. “There being no near neighbors to drop in.” Then suddenly she exclaimed, “Oh, for goodness sakes alive, I completely forgot that letter. It’s for both of us from Polly and Patsy. I’ve been wondering why they didn’t write and tell us where they had decided to spend their summer vacation.”
Dora sprang up to search for the letter in a pocket of her riding habit. Mary sat near a window in a curly maple rocker as she said dreamily: “If we hadn’t come West, we would have been with them – that is, if they went to Camp Winnichook up in the Adirondacks the way we had planned all winter.”
Dora, holding the letter unopened, sat near her friend and smiled at her reminiscently as she said, “We plan and plan and plan for the future, don’t we, and then we do something exactly different, and most unexpected, but I wouldn’t give up being out here on the desert and living in a ghost town for all the fun Patsy and Polly may be having – ”
Mary laughingly interrupted. “Do read the letter and let’s see if they really did go there. Perhaps – ”
“Yes, they did.” Dora had unfolded a large, boyish-looking sheet of paper. “Camp Winnichook,” she announced, then she read the rather indolent scrawl. “Dear Cowgirls,” – it began —
“Patsy has just come in from a swim. She’s drying her bathing suit by lying on the sand in front of the cabin in the sun. Her red hair, which she calls
