A GUN SHOT
Early that afternoon Jerry and Dick drove the small car around to the
side door of the ranch house and hallooed for the girls, who appeared,
one on either side of a beaming Aunt Mollie.
“We’ve had a wonderful time, you dear.” Mary kissed the older woman’s
tanned cheek lovingly.
“Spiffy-fine!” Dora’s dark glowing eyes seconded the enthusiasm of the
remark. “Please ask us again.”
“Any time, no one _could_ be more welcome, and make it soon.” After the
girls had run down to the car, Mrs. Newcomb turned back into the kitchen
where she was keeping Mr. Newcomb’s mid-day meal warm as he had not yet
returned from riding the range.
The boys leaped out and Jerry opened the front door with a flourish. He
glanced at Mary suspiciously. “You girls look as though you were plotting
mischief.”
“Not that,” Mary denied. “We’ve just been composing Verse Eight for our
Cowboy Song. You know they have to be forty verses long. Ready, Dora?”
Then together they laughingly sang—
“Two jolly girls and cowboys twain
Start out adventuring once again.
Come, come, coma,
Coma, coma, kee.
Come, come, coma,
Come with we.”
“Not so hot!” Dick commented. “Wait till I’ve had time to cook up one.
Jerry, we’ll do Verse Nine after awhile.”
“Drive fast enough to cool us, won’t you, Jerry, for it surely _is_
torrid today,” Dora urged as she sprang nimbly into the rumble followed
by Dick. “You two have your heads sheltered but we poor exposed pussons
are likely to have frizzled brains.”
Dick, sinking down as comfortably as possible in the rather cramped
quarters, grinned at his companion affably. “Luckily for us Jerry didn’t
hear that or he would have sprung that old one, ‘what makes you think you
have any?’”
Dora turned toward him rather blankly. “Any what?” she questioned, then
added quickly, “Oh, of course, brains. I was wondering what those cows,
that are watching us so intently, think that we are.”
“Some four-headed, square-bodied fierce animal that rattles all its bones
when it runs, I suspect, and if they could hear Jerry’s horn, they’d take
to the high timber up around the Dooleys’ clearing.”
Suddenly Dora became serious. “Dick,” she said, “isn’t that Etta a
strange, interesting girl? Would you call her beautiful?”
“I wouldn’t call her at all,” Dick said sententiously; “I’m quite
satisfied with my present companion.”
Ignoring his facetiousness, Dora continued, “Etta told us that her father
lost a fortune four years ago. He evidently had inherited it. He couldn’t
have made it himself, because, when it was lost, he was simply helpless.
He didn’t know how to work and earn more. That implies that he belonged
to a rich family, doesn’t it?”
“Possibly. In fact probably,” Dick agreed, looking with mock solemnity
through his shell-rimmed glasses at the interested, olive-tinted face of
his companion. “Is all this leading somewhere? Do you think that there
_may_ be rich relatives who ought to be notified of the Dooleys’ plight?”
Dora laughed as she acknowledged that she hadn’t thought that far.
“Aren’t you afraid we’ll get sort of mixed up if we try to solve two
mysteries at once?” Dick continued. “You know we’re already hot on the
trail of a clue that will unravel the Lucky Loon—Little Bodil mystery.”
Dora turned brightly toward him. “Dick Farley,” she announced, as one who
had made an important discovery, “here _is_ something! Little Bodil is
described as having had deep blue eyes and cornsilk yellow hair.”
“Sure thing, what of it? Etta’s hair is dark brown.”
“I’m talking about that Baby Bess, silly!” Dora told him. “Surely you
noticed that she had—”
“Hair and eyes? Sure thing!” Dick finished her sentence jokingly, “but,
according to my rather limited observation of the infant terrible, it
usually starts life with blue eyes and yellow hair. Now are you going to
tell me that this baby and Little Bodil have another similarity?”
Dora had turned and was looking out over the desert valley, which, for
the past half hour, they had been crossing. Dick thought she was offended
by his good-natured raillery, but, if she had been, she thought better of
it and replied, “I had not noticed any other similarity.”
“Well, neither had I,” Dick, wishing to mollify her, confessed, “except
that both of their names start with B.”
The small car had turned on the cross road which led toward Gleeson. As
they neared the high cliff-like gate which was the entrance to the
box-shaped sandy front yard of Mr. Pedergen’s rock house and tomb, Dick
leaned forward and called, “Hi there, Jerry! Dora suggests that we stop
and visit Lucky Loon’s estate. We aren’t in any particular hurry, are
we?”
The rattling of the car was stilled as Jerry drew to one side of the road
and stopped. He got out and glanced up at the sun. It still was high in a
gleaming blue sky. “It’s hours yet before milking time,” he replied. Then
to Mary, “What is _your_ wish, Little Sister?”
Dora thought, “_Never_ a brother in all this world puts so much
tenderness into _that_ name. Leastwise _mine_ don’t!”
Mary had evidently replied that she would like to revisit the rock house,
for Jerry was assisting her from the car. Dick had learned from past
experience that Dora scorned assistance. Two girls could _not_ be more
unlike.
Before they entered the rock gate, Dick implored with pretended
earnestness, “For Pete’s sake, don’t any of you imagine you hear a gun
shot, will you?”
“Not unless we really _do_ hear one,” Mary said.
Dora, to be impish, declared, “I’m prophesying that we _will_ hear a gun
fired before we leave this enclosure.”
The sand was deep and the walking was hard. Jerry, with a hand under
Mary’s right elbow, helped her along, but Dora ploughed alone, with Dick,
making no better headway, at her side.
“When we first visited this place,” Dora began, “I felt that there was
sort of a deathlike atmosphere about it. It’s so terribly still and with
bleached skeletons lying around. Now that I _know_ it is Lucky Loon’s
tomb,” she glanced up at the rock house and shuddered, “it seems more
uncanny than ever.”
Dick, having left the others, wandered along the base of the cliff on
which stood the rock house. The front of it had broken away leaving a
wide gap at the top.
“Here’s where Lucky Loon went up, I suppose.” Dick pointed to irregular
steps that seemed to have been hewn out of the leaning rock. “We _could_
go up these stairs to the top of this rock, but nothing short of a
mountain goat could leap that chasm.”
“I reckon you’re right,” Jerry agreed.
Dick was regarding the gap speculatively. “If a fellow could throw a rope
from the top of this leaning rock over to the house and make it secure
somehow—”
Dora teasingly interrupted, “I didn’t know, Doctor Dick, that _you_ could
walk a tight rope.”
“Oh sure, I can do anything I set out to!” was the joking reply.
“However, I meant to walk across it with my hands.”
“It can’t be done.” The cowboy shook his head.
“Anyhow,” Dick declared, “you all wait here while I see how far up these
old stairs I can climb. From the top I can better estimate how big a goat
will be required to carry me over.”
“Dick,” Mary laughed, “I never knew you to be so nonsensical.”
Dora tried to detain him, saying, “If you succeed in climbing up to the
top of this leaning rock, you _might_ be directly opposite the open door
of the rock house.”
“Well, what of it!” Dick was puzzled, for Dora’s expression was serious
and almost fearful.
“That Evil Eye Turquoise _might_ look right out at you!”
“Surely _you_ don’t believe _that_ yarn!” Dick smiled down at her from
the first step, for he had started to climb. He reached up to catch at a
higher step with one hand when he uttered a terrorized scream and fairly
dropped back to the ground, his arm held out. Clinging to his coat
sleeve, perilously close to his wrist, was a huge lizard, a Gila Monster,
thick-bodied, hideously mottled, dull-yellow, orange-red, dead-black. It
had a blunt head and short legs that were clawing the air. The girls
echoed Dick’s scream. Jerry, leaping forward, gave a warning cry. “_Don’t
drop your arm!_” Then the quick command, “_Girls, get back of me!_”
Whipping out his gun, he fired. The ugly reptile dropped to the sand, its
muscles convulsing.
Dora ran to Dick and pulled back his sleeve. “Thank heavens,” she cried,
“he didn’t touch your wrist.”
“I reckon you’ve had a narrow escape all right, old man,” Jerry declared,
his tone one of great relief. Then, self-rebukingly, “I ought to have
warned you. _Never_ put your feet or your hands _anywhere_ that you can’t
see.”
“Do you suppose there’s any poison in my coat sleeve?” Dick asked
anxiously.
“No, I reckon not,” the cowboy said. “A Gila Monster packs his poison in
his lower jaw and he has to turn over on his back before he can get it
into a wound he makes.” Then, glancing at Mary and seeing that she still
looked white and was trembling, he exclaimed, “Come, let’s go. I reckon
it’s too hot in here at this hour.”
Dora, hardly knowing that she did so, clung to Dick’s arm as they waded
through the sand to the gate.
“Oh, how I do hope we’ll never, _never_ have to come to this awful place
again,” Mary said. “To think that Dick might have lost his life here.”
“Well, I didn’t!” Dick replied. Then, with an effort at levity, he added,
“Dora, _you won_! We _did_ hear a gun shot.”