The Phantom Town Mystery. Norton Carol

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      Before the other girl could reply, Dick, who had leaped to the ground, struck a ridiculous pose as he said in a deep, dramatic voice, “Dick, the Desperate Range Rider.”

      Dora’s infectious laugh rang out. “Your big, dark eyes look so solemn through those shell-rimmed glasses, Mr. Desperate Dick, that somehow you fail to strike terror into our hearts,” she bantered.

      Then Mary smiled up at Jerry, who was standing near her. Half teasingly she asked, “To what do we owe the honor of this visit? When we parted this afternoon, you called ‘we’ll see you tomorrow.’”

      Jerry glanced at the other boy, mischievous twinkles in his gray eyes. “You might as well ’fess up, old man. Truth is, Dick couldn’t wait until tomorrow to let you girls admire him in his cowboy togs.”

      “Villain!” Dick tried to glower at his betraying friend, but ended by beaming upon him with a most friendly grin. “I suppose I had to rope you and drag you over here quite against your will.”

      Jerry’s smile at the curly-headed little girl at his side revealed, more than words, the real reason of his coming. What he said was, “Mom had a letter she wanted mailed and – er – as long as Dick wanted to show off, I reckoned – ”

      “Oh, Jerry,” Mary caught his arm, “it really doesn’t matter in the least why you came. I was wild to see you – ” then, when the tall cowboy began to glow with pride, Mary quite spoiled her compliment by hurrying to add, “Oh, it wasn’t you that I wanted to see.” Jerry pretended to be greatly crestfallen, so she laughingly added, “Of course I’m always glad to see you, Big Brother, but – ”

      “Goodness!” Dora rushed to her friend’s rescue. “You’re getting all tangled up.” Then to Jerry, “Mary and I are wild to know more about that awfully desolate stone house you showed us this afternoon and about the Evil Eye Turquoise – ”

      “Yes, and about poor Mr. Lucky Loon – ” Mary put in.

      “Rather a contradictory description, isn’t it?” Dick asked. “How can a man be poor and lucky all in one sentence?”

      “I’ll tell you what.” Jerry had a plan to suggest. “Let’s go down to the store and get old Silas Harvey to tell us all that he knows about Lucky Loon. I reckon he’d loosen up for you girls, but he never would for me. He knows more than any other living person about that rock house and the mystery of Sven Pedersen’s life – ”

      “Oh, good!” Mary’s animated face was lovely to look upon in the starlight. Jerry’s eyes would have told her so, had she read them aright, but her thoughts were not of herself.

      “Let’s walk down,” she suggested. “It’s such a lovely night.” Then she added, “Wait here while Dora and I go up to our room and put on our sweater coats.”

      “You’ll need them!” Dick commented. “Even in June these desert nights are nippy.”

      The girls, hand in hand, fairly danced through the wide lower hall, but so softly that no sound could penetrate the closed door beyond which Mary’s father slept.

      They did not need to light the kerosene lamp. The two long door-like windows in Mary’s room were letting in a flood of soft, silvery starlight. Dora found her flash and her jaunty green sweater coat. “It looks better with this cherry-colored dress than my pink one,” she chattered, “and your yellow coat looks too sweet for anything with that blue dress. Happy Days, but doesn’t Jerry think you’re too pretty to be real? His eyes almost eat you up – ”

      “Silly!” Mary retorted. “It’s utterly impossible for Jerry and me to fall in love with each other. Goodness, didn’t we play together when we were babies?” Her tone seemed to imply that no more could possibly be said upon the subject.

      “No one is so blind as he who will not see,” Dora sing-songed her trite quotation, then, fearing that Mary would not like so much teasing, she slipped a loving arm about her and gave her a little contrite hug. “I’ll promise to join the blind hereafter, if you think I’m seeing too much, Mary dear,” she promised.

      “I think you’re imagining too much,” was the laughing rejoinder. “Now, let’s tiptoe downstairs, and oh, I must tap at the sitting-room door and tell nice Mrs. Farley where we are going.”

      Just before Mary tapped, however, the door opened softly and Dick appeared, his mother closely following, her rather tired brown eyes adoring him. “Haven’t I the nicest cowboy son?” she asked the girls, glancing from one to the other impartially.

      It was Dora who replied, “We think so, Mrs. Farley.”

      “However,” the mother leaned forward to kiss the boy’s pale cheek, “I’ll not be entirely satisfied until you’re as brown as Jerry.”

      “Has Dick told you that we girls are going? – ” Mary began.

      Mrs. Farley nodded pleasantly. “Down to the post office? Yes, I hope you’ll find that ancient storekeeper in a garrulous mood. Good night!”

      Jerry was seated on the top step of the back porch waiting for them. They caught a dreamy far-away expression in his gray eyes. He was looking across the shimmering distance to the Chiricahua Mountains, and thinking of the time when he would build, on his own five hundred acres, a home for someone. He glanced up almost guiltily when Mary’s finger tips gave him a light caress on his sun-tanned cheek.

      “Brother Jerry,” she teased, “are you star-dreaming?”

      He sprang to his feet. “I reckon I was dreaming, sure enough, Little Sister,” he confessed.

      Mary slipped her slim, white hand under his khaki-covered arm, and, smiling up at him with frank friendship, she said, “The road down the hill is so rough and hobbly, I’m going to hang on to you, may I?”

      Dora did not hear the cowboy’s low spoken reply, for Dick was speaking to her, but to herself she thought, “Some day a miracle will be performed and she who is now blind will see, and great will be the revelation.” Then, self-rebuking and aloud, “Oh, Dick, forgive me, what were you saying? I reckon, as Jerry says, that I was thinking of something else.”

      “Not very complimentary to your present companion.” Dick pretended to be quite downcast about it. “I merely asked if I might aid you over the ruts – ”

      Dora laughed gleefully. “Dick,” she said in a low voice, “I’m going to tell you what I was thinking. I was wondering why Mary doesn’t notice that Jerry likes her extra-special.” Dick’s eyes were wide in the starlight. “Does he? I hadn’t noticed it.”

      Dora laughed and changed the subject. “Oh, Dick, isn’t this the shudderin’est, spookiest place there ever was?”

      They had passed the three small adobe huts that were occupied by Mexican families and were among the old crumbling houses, which, in the dim light, looked more haunted than they had in the day.

      “I suppose that each one holds memories of sudden riches won, and many of them have secrets of tragedies, —murders even, maybe.” Dora shuddered and drew closer to Dick.

      “You are imaginative tonight,” he said, smiling at her startled, olive-tinted face. “It’s quite a leap, though, from romance СКАЧАТЬ