“DESPERATE DICK”
Skipping to the vine-covered back porch, the two girls peered through the
deepening dusk at the approaching car. In it were two boys.
“One of them resembles Jerry,” Mary said, “but the other one is also a
cowboy, so it can’t be Dick.”
“It is Dick!” Dora exclaimed gleefully. “Jerry must have loaned him some
cowboy togs.”
“Oh, Happy Days!” Mary exulted. “Now we can ask Jerry about that Evil Eye
Turquoise and all the rest of the story about poor Mr. Lucky Loon.”
“If there is any rest to it,” Dora remarked. “Look!” she interrupted
herself to point laughingly at the little car that was rattling toward
them. “Dick is waving his sombrero. He wants us to be sure and take
notice of it!”
“Isn’t he proud though?” Mary chuckled. “His face fairly shines.”
Then, as the small car drew up near the porch, the girls clapped their
hands gaily, and yet quietly, remembering that Mary’s invalid father
might be asleep.
“Oh, Dick,” Dora exclaimed, not trying to hide her admiration, “your
mother must see her to-be-physician son. You make a regular screen-star
cowboy, doesn’t he, Mary?”
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 to gunfights
and—”
Mary turned to call back to them, “Jerry and I have it all planned, just
what we are to do. I’m to ask some innocent question and, Dora, you’re to
help me out, but we mustn’t appear _too_ interested or too prying, Jerry
says, or for some reason, quite unknown, old Mr. Harvey will put on the
clam act. Shh! Here we are! Good, there’s a light. Now Jerry is to speak
his piece first and I am to chime in. Then, Dora, you take your cue from
me.”
Dick whispered close to his companion’s ear, “I evidently haven’t a
speaking part in the tragedy or comedy about to be enacted.”
Dora giggled. “You can be scenery,” she teased, recalling to Dick the
forgotten fact that he was wearing a cowboy outfit for the first time and
feeling rather awkward in it.
Jerry opened the door, a jangling bell rang; then he stepped aside and
let Mary enter first.