DICK FERRAL.
A young fellow of seventeen or eighteen crawled over the brink of the
chasm and sat on the rocks to breathe himself. The lamps of the Red
Flier shone full on him, so that Matt and Carl were easily able to take
his sizing.
He wore a flannel shirt, cowboy-hat and high-heeled boots. His trousers
were tucked in his boot-tops. His bronzed face was clean-cut, and he
had clear, steady eyes.
"Wouldn't that just naturally rattle your spurs?" he asked, looking
Matt and Carl over as he talked. "I thought you fellows had put a stamp
on that rope and were sending it by mail. It seemed like a good while
coming, but maybe that was because I was hangin' to a twig and three
leaves with the skin of my teeth." He swerved his eyes to the Red
Flier. "You've lit your candles," he added, "since you scared me out of
a year's growth by flashin' around that bend. If you'd had the lights
going _then_, I guess I could have crowded up against the cliff instead
of makin' a jump t'other way and going over the edge."
"You vas wrong mit dot," said Carl. "It vasn't us vat come along und
knocked you py der gulch."
"That's the truth," added Matt, noting the stranger's startled
expression. "We were following that other automobile, and stopped when
we heard you yell."
Without a word the rescued youth got up and went back to give the
Red Flier a closer inspection. When he returned, he seemed entirely
satisfied that he had made a mistake.
"I did slip my hawser on that first idea, and no mistake," said he. "As
I went over, I saw out of the clew of my eye that the other flugee was
white. Yours is bigger, and painted different. What are your names,
mates?"
Matt introduced himself and Carl.
"I'm Dick Ferral," went on the other, shaking hands heartily, "and when
I'm at home, which is about once in six years, I let go the anchor in
Hamilton, Ontario. I'm a sailor, most of the time, but for the last
six months I've been punching cattle in the Texas Panhandle. A crimp
annexed my money, back there in Lamy, and I'm rolling along toward an
old ranch my uncle used to own, called La Vita Place. It can't be far
from here, if I'm not off my bearings. Where are you bound, mates, in
that steam hooker?"
"Santa Fé," answered Matt.
"Own that craft?" and Dick Ferral nodded toward the car.
"No; it belongs to a man named Tomlinson, who lives in Denver. Carl and
I brought it to Albuquerque for him. When we got there, we found a line
from him asking us to bring the car on to Santa Fé. If we got there in
two weeks he said it would be time enough, so we're jogging along and
taking things easy."
"If you've got plenty of time, I shouldn't think you'd want to do any
cruising in waters like these, unless you had daylight to steer by."
"We'd have reached the next town before sunset," Matt answered, "if we
hadn't had trouble with a tire."
"It was a good thing for me you were behind your schedule, and happened
along just after I turned a handspring over the cliff. If you hadn't,
Davy Jones would have had me by this time. But what became of that
other craft? I didn't have much time to look at it, for it came foaming
along full and by, at a forty-knot gait, but as I slid over the rock I
couldn't see a soul aboard."
"No more dere vasn't," said Carl earnestly. "Dot vas a shpook pubble,
Verral. You see him, und ve see him, aber he don'd vas dere; nodding,
nodding at all only schust moonshine!"
"Well, well, well!" Ferral cast an odd glance at Motor Matt. "That old
flugee was a sort of Flying Dutchman, hey?"
"I don'd know somet'ing about dot," answered Carl, shaking his head
gruesomely, "aber I bed you it vas a shpook."
"There wasn't any one on the car," put in Matt, "and it's a mystery how
it traveled this road like it did. It came out of a gully, farther back
around the bend, right ahead of us. We followed it, and when we had
come around that turn it had vanished."
"What you say takes me all aback, messmates," said Ferral. "I'm no
believer in ghost-stories, but this one of yours stacks up nearer the
real thing in that line than any I ever heard. Say," and Ferral seemed
to have a sudden idea, "if you fellows want a berth for the night, why
not put in at La Vita Place?"
"Sure, Matt, vy nod?" urged Carl.
"How far is it, Ferral?" asked Matt.
"It can't be far from here, although I'm a bit off soundings on this
part of the chart. I've never been to Uncle Jack's before--and shame
on me to say it--and likely I wouldn't be going there now if the old
gentleman hadn't dropped off, leaving things in a bally mix. They say
I'm to get my whack from the estate, if a will can be found, although
I don't know why anything should come to me. I've always been a rover,
and Uncle Jack didn't like it. My cousin, Ralph Sercomb--I never liked
him and wouldn't trust him the length of a lead line--stands to win his
pile by the same will. Ralph is at the ranch, and, I suppose, waitin'
for me with open arms and a knife up his sleeve."
"When did your uncle die?" inquired Matt.
"As near as I can find out, he just simply vanished. All he left was
a line saying he was tired of living alone, that he never could get
me to give up my roaming and come and stay with him, and that while
Ralph came often and did what he could to cheer him up, he had always
had a soft place in his heart for me, and missed me. He said, too, in
that last writing of his, that when he was found his will would be
found with him, and that he hoped Ralph and I would stay at the ranch
until the will turned up. That's what came to me, down in the Texas
Panhandle, from a lawyer in Lamy. As soon as I got that I felt like a
swab. Here I've been knockin' around the world ever since I was ten,
Uncle Jack wanting me all the time and me holding back. Now I'm coming
to the ranch like a pirate. Anyhow, that's the way it looks. If Uncle
Jack was alive he'd say, 'You couldn't come just to see me, Dick, but
now that I'm gone, and have left you something, you're quick enough to
show up.'"
Ferral turned away and looked down into the blackness of the gulch. He
faced about, presently, and went on:
"But it wasn't Uncle Jack's money that brought me. Now, when it's
too late, I'm trying to do the right thing--and to make up for what
I ought to have done and didn't do in the past. A fellow like me is
thoughtless. He never understands where he's failed in his duty till a
blow like this brings it home to him. He's the only relative Ralph and
I had left, and I've acted like a misbemannered Sou'wegian.
"When I went to sea, I shipped from Halifax on the _Billy Ruffian_,
as we called her, although she's down on the navy list as the
_Bellerophon_. From there I was transferred to the South African
station, and the transferring went on and on till my time was out, and
I found myself down in British Honduras. Left there to come across the
Gulf of Galveston, and worked my way up into the Texas Panhandle, where
I navigated the Staked Plains on a cow-horse. Had six months of that,
when along came the lawyer's letter, and I tripped anchor and bore away
for here. As I told you, a crimp did me out of my roll in Lamy. He
claimed to be a fellow Canuck in distress, and I was going with him to
his hotel to see what I could do to help him out. He led me into a dark
street, and somebody hit me from behind and I went down and out with
a slumber-song. Then I got up and laid a course for Uncle Jack's. If
you'll go with me the rest of the way, I'll like it, and you might just
as well stop over at La Vita Place and make a fresh start for Santa Fé
in the morning."
"We'll do it," answered Matt, who was liking Dick Ferral more and more
as he talked.
"Dot's der shtuff!" chirped Carl. "Oof you got somet'ing to eat at der
ranch, und a ped to shleep on, ve vill ged along fine."
"I guess we can find all that at the place, although I don't think the
ranch amounts to much. Uncle Jack was queer--not unhinged, mind you,
only just a bit different from ordinary people. He never did a thing
in quite the same way some one else would do it. When he left England,
a dozen years ago, he stopped with us a while in Hamilton, and then
came on here and bought an old Mexican _casa_. He wanted to get away
from folks, he said, but I guess he got tired of it; if he hadn't, he
wouldn't have been so dead set on having me with him after my parents
died. The bulk of his money is across the water. But hang his money!
It's Uncle Jack himself I'm thinking about, now."
"We'll get into the car," said Matt, "and go on a hunt for La Vita
Place."
Matt stepped to the crank. As he bent over it, Carl gave a frightened
shout.
"Look vonce!" he quavered, pointing along the road with a shaking
finger. "Dere iss some more oof der shpooks!"
Matt started up and whirled around. Perhaps a hundred feet from where
the three boys were standing, a dim figure could be seen, silvered
uncannily by the moonlight.
"Great guns, Carl!" muttered Matt. "Your nerves must be in pretty bad
shape. That's a man, and he's been walking toward us while we were
talking."
"Vy don'd he come on some more, den?" asked Carl. "Vat iss he shtandin'
shdill mit himseluf for? Vy don'd he shpeak oudt und say somet'ing?"
"Hello!" called Ferral. "How far is it to La Vita Place, pilgrim?"
The form did not answer, but continued to stand rigid and erect in the
moonlight.
"Ve'd pedder ged oudt oof dis so kevick as ve can," faltered Carl,
crouching back under the shadow of the car. "I don'd like der looks oof
dot feller."
"Let's get closer to him, Ferral," suggested Matt, starting along the
road at a run.
"It's main queer the way he's actin', and no mistake," muttered Ferral,
starting after Matt.
Matt was about half-way to the motionless figure, when it melted slowly
into the black shadow of the cliff. On reaching the place where the
figure had stood, it was nowhere to be seen.
"What do you think of that, Ferral?" Matt asked in bewilderment.
Ferral did not reply. His eyes were bright and staring, and he leaned
against the rock wall and drew a dazed hand across his brows.