A LONELY MOUNTAIN ROAD
While the four young people ate the delicious chicken sandwiches which
Mrs. Newcomb had prepared for them and drank creamy milk poured into
aluminum cups from a big thermos bottle, they sat gazing silently about
them, awed by the terrific majesty of the scene, the girls not entirely
unafraid. Below them was a sheer drop of hundreds of feet to a desert
floor which was most uneven, having been cut up by torrents, which,
during each heavy rain, were hurled down the mountain sides.
The effect of the desert for miles beyond was that of a little “Grand
Canyon.” Dora, thoughtfully gazing at it, said,—“In a few centuries,
other girls and boys will stand here, perhaps, and by _that_ time those
canyons will be worn deep as the real Grand Canyon is today, won’t they,
Jerry?”
“I reckon that’s right,” the cowboy replied.
Then Mary asked, “Jerry, is this old dangerous mountain road the _very_
same one that the stages used to cross years ago?”
Jerry nodded, but before he could speak, Mary, shining-eyed, rushed on
with, “Oh, Dora, I _know_ why the boys have brought us here! _This_ is
the road where the three bandits held up the stage that Sven Pedersen and
poor Little Bodil were riding in.”
“Of course it is!” Dora generously refrained from telling her friend that
she had been convinced of _that_ fact ever since they began climbing the
grade.
Glowing blue eyes turned toward the cowboy. “Oh, Jerry, have you any idea
where the exact spot was; where the bandits shot the driver, I mean, and
where the horses plunged over the cliff and where that poor little girl
was thrown out into the road?” Excitement had made her breathless.
Jerry’s admiring gray eyes smiled down at the eagerly chattering girl. “I
reckon I know close to the spot. Silas Harvey said it was just at the top
of Devil’s Drop, and—”
Mary interrupted, horror in her tone, “Oh, Jerry, _what_ a dreadful name!
_What_ is it? _Where_ is it?” She was gazing about, her eyes startled.
The road disappeared fifty feet ahead of them around a sharp curve. For
answer Jerry started the motor, then, joltingly and with cautious
slowness, the small car crept toward the curve. Unconsciously the girls
were almost holding their breath as they gazed unblinkingly out of
staring eyes at the wall of rock around which the road was winding.
When they saw “Devil’s Drop,” a bare, granite peak, up the near side of
which the old road climbed at an angle which seemed but slightly off the
perpendicular, Mary, with a little half sob, covered her eyes.
Jerry, terribly self-rebuking, wished sincerely that he and Dick had come
alone. He was sure that the road was safe, for he and his father had
crossed it since the last heavy rain. Mr. Newcomb had a mining claim
which could be reached by no other road. So it was with confidence that
Jerry tried to allay Mary’s fears. “Little Sister,” he said, “please
trust me when I tell you that the grade _looks_ a lot worse than it is.
I’d turn back if I could, but it wouldn’t be safe to try.”
Mary, ashamed of her momentary lack of faith in Jerry’s good judgment,
put down her hands and smiled up into his anxious face.
“Jerry,” she said, “I’m going to shut my eyes tight until we are up top.
You tell me, won’t you, when the worst is over?”
Dora had made no sound, but Dick, glancing at her, saw that she was
staring down at the hamper at her feet as though she saw something there
that fascinated her. He, also, feared that the girls should have been
left at home. Nor was he himself altogether fearless. Having spent his
boyhood in and around Boston, he was unused to perilous mountain rides
and he was glad when the car came to a jolting stop and Jerry’s voice,
relief evident in its tone, sang out, “We’re up top, and all the rest of
our ride will be going down.”
Mary opened her eyes and saw that the road had widened on what seemed to
be a large ledge. Jerry climbed out and put huge stones in front and back
of the wheels, then he held out his hand.
“Here’s where we start hunting for clues,” he said, smiling, but at the
same time scanning his companion’s face hoping that all traces of fear
had vanished.
Dora and Dick went to the outer edge of the road. “Such a view!” Dora
cried, flinging her arms wide to take in the magnitude of it.
“Describe it, who can?”
“I’ll try!” Dick replied. “A bleak, barren, cruel desert lay miles below
them like a naked, bony skeleton of sand and rock.”
Mary, clinging to the cowboy’s arm, joined the others but kept well back
from the edge. “Jerry,” she said in an awed voice, “do you think—was this
the very spot, do you suppose, where the stage was held up?”
“I reckon so,” Jerry replied, “as near as I could figure out from what
Silas Harvey said.”
Dora turned. “Then somewhere along here was where poor Little Bodil was
thrown into the road.”
The cowboy nodded. A saw-tooth peak rose just beyond them.
Dora, gazing at it, speculated aloud: “_Could_ a wild beast have slunk
around the curve there snatched the child and dashed away with it to its
cave?”
“We’ll probably never know,” Dick replied. “That could have happened,
couldn’t it Jerry?”
“I reckon so,” the cowboy began, when Mary caught his arm again. “Oh,
Jerry,” she cried, “_are_ there wild animals now—I mean living here in
these mountains?”
The cowboy glanced at Dick before he replied. “None, Little Sister, that
will hurt _you_. Don’t think about them.”
But Mary persisted. “At least _tell me_ what wild animal lives around
here that might have dragged Little Bodil to its lair.”
Jerry, realizing that there was nothing else to do, said in as
indifferent a tone as he could, “I reckon there _may_ be a mountain lion
or so up here, and a puma perhaps. That’s sort of a big cat, but _it’s_ a
coward all right! Gets away every time if it can.” He hoped that would
satisfy Mary but instead she looked up at the grim peak above them, her
eyes startled, searching. “I saw a picture once, oh, I remember it was in
my biology book, of a huge catlike creature crouched on a ledge. It was
about to spring on a goat that was on the mountain below it. Underneath
the picture was printed, ‘The Puma springs from ledges down upon its
unsuspecting prey.’ I remember it because it both fascinated and
terrorized me.”
“Mary,” the cowboy took both her hands and smiled into her wide blue
eyes, “will it make you feel better about wild animals attacking us if I
tell you that Dick and I are both carrying concealed weapons?”
Mary smiled up at Jerry as she said, “You think I’m a silly, I _know_ you
do, and I don’t blame you. I’m not going to be fearful of anything again
today.” Then, as she glanced down the steep road up which they had come,
she returned the conversation to the subject from which they had so far
digressed. “Jerry, which way do you suppose the three bandits came?”
“I reckon they came around the sharp curve over there. They could hide
and not be seen by the driver of the stage until he was almost upon
them.”
Anxiously Mary asked, “There wouldn’t be any bandits on _this_ road
_these_ days, would there?”
It was Dora who answered, “Mary Moore, you _know_ there wouldn’t be.
Jerry told us that this road is abandoned by practically all travelers.”
Then turning to the cowboy, Dora excitedly exclaimed, “Why, Jerry, if
_this_ is the spot where the stage was held up and where the horses
plunged off the road, don’t you think it’s possible _something_ may be
left of the stage, something that _we_ could find?”
“That’s what I reckoned,” the cowboy said slowly. “Dick and I were
planning to climb down the side of the cliff here and see what we could
unearth, but I reckon we’d better give up and go home. Dick, you and I
can come back some other time—alone.”
“Oh, no!” Dora pleaded. “Mary and I are all over being afraid. We have on
our divided skirts, and, if it’s safe for you to climb down Devil’s Drop,
why, it’s safe for us, isn’t it, Mary?”
“If Jerry says so,” was the trusting reply accompanied by an equally
trusting glance from sweet blue eyes.
Instead of answering, Jerry beckoned Dick over to the edge of the steep
drop. It was not a sheer descent. Every few feet down there was a narrow
ledge, almost like uneven stairs. There were scrubby growths in crevices
to which the girls could cling. About one hundred feet down there was a
wide-flung ledge and then another descent, how perilous that was they
could not discern from where they stood.
“We could get the girls down to that first wide ledge easily enough,”
Dick said, “if you think we ought.”
Jerry spoke in a low voice which, the girls could not hear. “I’m terribly
sorry we brought them. My plan was to have them sit in the car up here in
the road while we went down to hunt for a skeleton of that old stage
coach, but now that Mary’s afraid of a wild animal attacking them, we
just can’t leave them alone. They don’t either of them know how to use a
gun. I reckon what we _ought_ to do is go back home and—”
Dick shook his head. “They won’t let us now,” he said, and he was right,
for the girls, tired of waiting, skipped toward them saying in a
sing-song, “Verse seven!”
“_Two_ cowgirls whom _nothing_ can stop
Are now going over the Devil’s Drop.
Come, come, coma,
Coma, coma, kee.
You may come along if
You’re brave as we.”
“Great!” Dick laughed, applauding.
“Well, only down as far as the wide ledge,” Jerry told them. “That will
be easy going, I reckon, and safe.” He held out his strong brown hand to
Mary, and, leading the way, he began the descent.