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.