The Phantom Town Mystery

Dora glanced up at the two boys sitting so silently on the counter back of the old man. She saw that they were both listening with interest. The story was evidently as new to Jerry as to the others. Dick motioned to Dora to ask another question as the old man had paused.

“Oh, Mr. Harvey,” she leaned forward to ask, “did that bragging boy actually try to rob Mr. Pedersen?”

“He sure sartin did,” the storekeeper replied. “He watched over the rocks o’ nights till he’d seen Lucky Loon ridin’ off, and, jedging by the pack he was totin’, that fellar cal’lated he was goin’ on one of them long rides he took, off’n’ on, hunting for Bodil. Wall, arter a time, he climbed up, draggin’ a bag he’d tuk along to put the gold in. He peered into the rock house door an’ thar was that eye, jest as Sven had said, in the wall opposite, an’ it was glarin’ green like a cat’s eye in the dark.”

The old man stopped talking and swayed his shaggy head back and forth for a long minute before he satisfied his listeners’ curiosity. Dora found herself clutching Mary’s hand but neither of them spoke.

“The nex’ day,” the old man continued, “cowboys ridin’ out on the road heerd screamin’. Then it stopped an’ they couldn’t place it nohow. Arter a time they heerd it agin. Thinkin’ as how Lucky Loon was hurt mabbe, they rode in through his gate an’ found that young tenderfoot fellar writhin’ around at the foot o’ the cliff. He was paralyzed, sure sartin, an’ arter he’d tol’ about seein’ that thar turquoise eye, he give up the ghost. That much is true. They fetched the tenderfoot fellar in here to my store an’ I seen the wild, skeered look in his eyes. Wall, arter that, Sven Pedersen didn’t have no more need to worry about his house bein’ robbed.”

“Oh-o-o! I should think not.” Mary shuddered, then she glanced at her wrist watch, thinking that they ought to go. Nine o’clock, and Mr. Harvey’s store was always dark before that. They were keeping him up, but before she could suggest leaving, she heard Dora asking still another question.

“Mr. Harvey, when did poor Mr. Lucky Loon die?”

There was actually a startled expression in the deeply sunken eyes of the old man. He turned in his chair and looked up at Jerry. After all, he had not forgotten the boys. In an awed voice he asked: “Jerry, did yo’ ever hear tell how old Sven Pedersen give up the ghost?”

The tall cowboy shook his head. “No, Mr. Harvey. I’ve asked Dad but he said it was a mystery that he reckoned never would be solved.”

“It wa’n’t never any mystery to me,” the old man told them, “but I’d been swore to secrecy. Sven Pedersen said he’d come back an’ hant my store if I ever tol’, but I reckon thar’s no sech thing as hants. Anyhow I ain’t never seen a ghost, though thar is folks as calls this here town hanted.”

Mary turned startled eyes around to question Jerry. That boy said seriously, “Mr. Harvey, we’d like awfully well to know what happened to Mr. Pedersen, but we wouldn’t want your store to be haunted if you believe – ”

“I don’ believe nothin’ o’ the sort.” The old man seemed to scorn the inference. Turning, he beckoned to the boys. “Stan’ up close, sort o’. I won’t tell it loud; than mabbe it won’t be heern by nobody but you-uns.”

Jerry stood close back of Mary’s chair. Dick sat on his heels next to Dora. The wind that had rattled loose boards had gone down. Not a sound was to be heard. The fire in the stove had burned to ashes. The room was getting cold but the girls did not notice. With wide, almost startled eyes they were watching the old man who was again chewing on an end of his gray beard.

Suddenly he cupped an ear with one palsied hand and seemed to be listening intently. Mary clutched Dora’s arm. She expected the old man to ask them if they heard a gun shot, but he didn’t. He dropped his arm and commenced in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Fer the las’ year o’ his life, Sven Pedersen give up minin’. He reckoned as how he’d never find his sister an’ he’d jest been pilin’ up wealth to give to her, he sed. He used to spec’late about poor Bodil a lot. She’d be a young woman now, he’d say, sad like, if them bandits let her live. Then thar was times when he’d hope she’d died ruther than be fetched up by robbers. He didn’t talk much about anythin’ else. Folks never knew whar he went to do his buyin’; thot as how he’d go off to Bisbee, but ’twa’n’t so. He come here arter midnight so’s not to be seen. He tol’ me if, chance be, Bodil was alive an’ showed up arter he was dead, he wanted her to have his gold. He writ a letter in that furrin tongue o’ his an’ give it to me. I got it yit. In it he tol’ Bodil whar he’d got his fortin hid.” The old man paused and blinked his eyes hard.

Mary asked softly, “But she never came, did she, Mr. Harvey? That poor Little Bodil with the china-blue eyes and the corn-silk hair.”

“No, she never come, an’ I cal’late she never will. Lucky Loon didn’t reckon she would, really, but he hung on till he felt death comin’. Then he tol’ me what he was a plannin’ to do to hisself.” The old man glanced anxiously at Jerry, who stood with his hands on Mary’s shoulders. “It’s a mighty gruesome story, the rest o’ it, Jerry lad. Do you reckon it’d better be tol’?”

It was Dora who replied, “Oh, please, Mr. Harvey! We girls aren’t a mite scary. It’s only a story to us, you know. It all happened so long ago.”

“Wall, as I was sayin’, Sven Pedersen knew he hadn’t long to live, so one night thar was a blizzard threatenin’ – an’ it turned into as bad a one as when he furst blowed into my store years back. Whar was I?” He looked blankly at Mary who prompted with, “So one night when he felt that he was soon to die – ”

“Sven come to me an’ swore me to keep it secret what he was goin’ to do. He sed that back of his house an’ opening into it, he had a vault. He’d jest left room for hisself to creep into it. Then he was goin’ to wall it up, an’ lay hisself down an’ die.”

“Oh, how terrible!” Dora exclaimed. “Surely he didn’t do that?”

The old man sighed. “Fur as I know he did. I seen as how he was white as a ghost an’ coughin’ suthin’ awful. I tol’ him to stay at the store till the blizzard blew over. It commonly lasted three days, but out he went an’ I never seen him sence.”

“Poor Lucky Loon!” Mary said commiseratingly.

“An’ poor Little Bodil,” Dora began, when she glanced at the old man who had suddenly sat erect, staring into a dark corner.

“Oh, Mr. Harvey,” Mary whispered, “do you see that ghost?”

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.

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 gayWished 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 boldTook two girls in a rattletrap old.Come, come, coma,Coma, coma, kee.And that’s all of itIf 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 wentIf 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 appetiteThey 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, comaWith 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?”