[Frontispiece: _On all sides there were deserted adobe houses in
varying degrees of ruin._]
THE PHANTOM
TOWN MYSTERY
By CAROL NORTON
Author _of_
“The Phantom Yacht,” “Bobs, A Girl Detective,”
“The Seven Sleuths’ Club,” “The Phantom
Town,” Etc.
THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY
Akron, Ohio New York
Copyright MCMXXXIII
The Saalfield Publishing Company
_Printed in the United States of America_
CONTENTS
I Lucky Loon 7
II The Ghost Town 15
III The Missing Friends 24
IV “Desperate Dick” 32
V Poor Little Bodil 40
VI The Evil-eye Turquoise 48
VII Middle of the Night 56
VIII Singing Cowboys 64
IX A Vagabond Family 72
X A Lonely Mountain Road 80
XI The Skeleton Stage Coach 88
XII A Narrow Escape 95
XIII A Sand Storm 103
XIV “A.’S and N. E.’S.” 111
XV In the Barn Loft 119
XVI Searching For Clues 127
XVII A Wooden Doll 135
XVIII A Strange Hostess 143
XIX A Gun Shot 151
XX Introducing an Air Scout 160
XXI A Possible Clue 168
XXII An Interesting Arrival 176
XXIII A Silver Plane 184
XXIV A Long Night Watch 192
XXV A Cry for Help 200
XXVI Is It a Clue? 208
XXVII It Was a Clue 215
XXVIII A New Complication 222
XXIX An Old Letter 230
XXX Secret Entrance to the Rock House 238
XXXI A Wonderful Secret Told 246
THE PHANTOM TOWN
MYSTERY
CHAPTER I
LUCKY LOON
A whirl of gleaming sand and dust on a cross desert road in Arizona. The
four galloping objects turned off the road, horses rearing, riders
laughing; the two Eastern girls flushed, excited; the pale college
student exultant; the cowboy guide enjoying their pleasure. A warm,
sage-scented wind carried the cloud of dust away from them down into the
valley.
“That was glorious sport, wasn’t it, Mary?” Dora Bellman’s olive-tinted
face was glowing joyfully. “Wouldn’t our equestrian teacher back in
Sunnybank Seminary be properly proud of us?”
Lovely Mary Moore, delicately fashioned, fair as her friend was dark,
nodded beamingly, too out of breath for the moment to speak.
Jerry Newcomb in his picturesque cowboy garb, blue handkerchief knotted
about his neck, looked admiringly at the smaller girl.
“I reckon you two’ll want to ride in the rodeo. I never saw Easterners
get saddle-broke on cow ponies as quick as you have.” Then his gray eyes
smiled at the other boy, tall, thin, pale, who was wiping dust from his
shell-rimmed glasses. “Dick Farley, I reckon you’ve ridden before.”
Dick flashed a radiant smile which made his rather plain face momentarily
good-looking. “Some,” he said, “when I was a kid on Granddad’s farm just
out of Boston.”
Jerry, a little ahead, was leading them slowly across soft shimmering
sand toward a narrow entrance in cliff-like rocks.
Dora protested, “Mary _ought_ to know how to ride a cow pony since she
was born right here on the desert while I have always lived on the Hudson
River until two weeks ago.”
“Even so,” Mary retaliated brightly, “but, as you know, I left here when
I was eight to go East to school and since I have _never_ been back, I
haven’t much advantage over you.”
The cowboy turned in his saddle and there was a tender light in his eyes
as he looked at the younger girl. “I’m sure glad something fetched you
back, Mary, though I’m mighty sorry it was your dad’s illness that did
it.”
Dora, glancing at the pretty face of her best friend, saw the frank,
friendly smile she gave the cowboy. To herself she thought,—“Jerry
certainly thinks Mary is the sweetest thing he ever saw, but _she_ only
thinks of him as a nice boy who once, long ago, was her childhood
playmate.”
They had reached the narrow entrance in the wall of rocks. It was a
mysterious looking spot; a giant gateway leading, the girls knew not
where. On the gleaming sand near the entrance lay a half-buried skeleton.
It looked as though it might have been that of a man rather than a beast.
The girls exchanged startled glances, but, as Jerry was riding
unconcernedly through the gateway, they silently followed.
“What a dramatic sort of place!” Dora exclaimed in an awed voice as she
gazed about her.
They were on a floor of sand that was circled about by low mountains,
grim, gray, uninviting. Here and there in crevices a twisted dwarf tree
clung, its roots exposed. There was a death-like silence in the place.
Even the soft rush of wind over the desert outside could not be heard.
Mary shuddered and rode closer to the cowboy. “Jerry,” she said, “_why_
have you brought us here? Is there something that you want to show us?”
The cowboy nodded. “You recollect that Dora was saying how she wished
there was a mystery she could solve—” he began, when he was interrupted.
“Oh, Jerry,” Dora’s dark eyes glowed with anticipation, “is there
_really_ a mystery here—in this awfully bleak place? What? Where? I don’t
see anything at all but those almost straight up and down cliffs and—”
There was an exultant exclamation from Dick Farley. Perhaps his strong
spectacles gave him clearer sight.
“I see a house, honest Injun, I do, or something that looks powerfully
like one.” He turned questioning eyes toward the cowboy.
“Righto! You’re clever, old man!” Jerry Newcomb told him. “Don’t tell
where it is. See if the girls can find it.”
For a long silent moment Mary and Dora sat in their saddles turning their
gaze slowly about the low circling mountains.
Dora’s excited cry told the others that she saw it, and Mary, noting the
direction of her friend’s gaze, saw, high on a narrow ledge, what looked
like a wall made of small rocks with openings that might have been meant
for two windows and a door. The flat roof could not be seen from the
floor of the desert.
“How perfectly thrilling!” Dora cried. “What was it, Jerry, an Indian
cliff dwelling?”
The cowboy shook his head. “Let’s ride up closer,” he said. He led the
way to the very base of the low mountain. The ledge, which had one time
been the front yard of the house, had been cracked by the elements and
leaned outward, leaving a crevice of about twenty feet. There were no
steps leading up to the house. It was, as far as the three Easterners
could see, without a way of approach.
Dick Farley rode about examining the spot from all angles. “Jerry,” he
said at last, “if it isn’t an Indian dwelling, who did live there? Surely
_not_ a white family!”
The cowboy shook his head. “Not a family. Only a man, Danish, but he was
white all right. Sven Pedersen was his name but everyone called him
‘Lucky Loon.’ The name fitted him on two counts. Lucky because he struck
it rich so often, and he certainly was ‘loony’ if that means crazy.”
“What did he do?” Mary asked, her blue eyes wide and a little terrified.
“Sven Pedersen had a secret—Dad said—and that was why he took to hoarding
all the wealth he got out of his gold and turquoise mines. My father was
a boy then. He says he hasn’t any doubt but that old rock house up yonder
is plastered with gold and turquoise.”
Dora asked in amazement, “Doesn’t anybody know? Hasn’t anyone _ever_
climbed up there to see?”
“No one that I’ve heard tell about,” Jerry said. “No one cared to risk
his life doing it, I reckon.” Then, seeming to feel that he had
sufficiently aroused his listeners’ curiosity, the cowboy went on to
explain. “As Sven Pedersen grew old, he got queerer and queerer. He took
a notion that he was going to be killed for his money, so after he’d
built that rock house, he shut himself up in it, and if any intruder so
much as rode through that gateway in the rocks over there, bang would go
his gun and the horse would drop dead. He was sure-shot all right, Sven
Pedersen was.”
Dick Farley’s large eyes glanced from the high house out to the gate in
the wall of rock. “I bet the rider of the dead horse scuttled away mighty
quick,” he said.
“I reckon he did,” Jerry agreed when Dora exclaimed in a tone of horror:
“He must have shot a man once anyway. Mary and I saw the half-buried
skeleton of one out by the gate. We were sure we did.”
“Maybe so,” Jerry went on explaining. “You see no one could tell whether
the Lucky Loon was in his house or out of it; no one ever saw him in the
door or on the ledge, but they found out soon enough when they heard his
gun bang.”
“How did he get his food and water?” Dick asked.
“Maybe there’s a spring on the mountain,” Dora suggested.
“Nary a spring,” the cowboy told them. “These mountains and the desert
around here are bone dry. That’s why there’s so many skeletons of cows
hereabout. Some reckoned that he rode away nights to a town where he
wasn’t known. He might have stayed away for days and got back in the
night without anyone knowing.”
“But, Jerry, what happened to him in the end? Does anybody know? Did he
go away?” Dora and Dick were questioning when Mary cried in sudden alarm,
“Oh, Jerry, he _isn’t_ here _now_, is he?”
It was Dora who replied, “Of course not, Mary. You _know_ Jerry wouldn’t
bring us in here if there was any danger of our being shot.”
“I reckon Sven Pedersen’s been dead this long time back,” the cowboy told
them. “Father was a kid when Lucky Loon was old. Dad says he and some
other kids watched around the gate rocks, taking turns for almost a week.
They reckoned if the old hermit _had_ gone away, they’d like to climb up
there and find the Evil Eye Turquoise Sven had boasted so much about
before he shut himself up.”
“_Did_ they climb up there?”
“_What_ was the eye?”
“One question at a time, please,” Jerry told the eager girls. “No, they
didn’t go. Dad said it was his turn to watch one night. There was a
cutting wind and since it was very dark, he thought he’d just slip inside
of the rock gate where the blowing sand wouldn’t hit him. Dad got sort of
sleepy, after a time, crouched down on the sand, when suddenly he heard a
gun bang. He leaped out of the gate, up on his horse and galloped for
home. He laughs when he tells that story. He reckons now that he’d
dreamed the shot since Sven Pedersen never _was_ seen again and that was
thirty years ago.” The cowboy had looked at his watch. “Jumping Steers!”
he exclaimed. “Most milking time and here I’m fifteen miles from the
ranch. Dick, will you ride home with the girls?”
Jerry had whirled his horse’s head and had started for the gateway, the
others quickly following. Dick, at the end, was just passing through the
gate when they distinctly heard the report of a gun.