A LETTER FROM GARRY
“Good gracious, why didn’t you tell me that hours ago?” cried Dorothy,
rising with an alacrity that made Tavia and Nat exchange amused and
sympathetic glances. “I haven’t had a letter from Garry since——”
“Yesterday!” finished Tavia with fine irony, and the corners of
Dorothy’s mouth dimpled in a brief smile.
“The day before!” she corrected demurely. “I was beginning to worry.”
She fetched the letter, a bulky, satisfactory-looking epistle from the
table in the hall and returned to the living room to read it in comfort.
“I needn’t ask you to excuse me while I examine my mail,” she remarked
to the absorbed couple in the window seat. “You are only too glad!”
“My, isn’t she the mean thing!” cried Tavia, not in the least abashed.
“Just wait till Garry Knapp comes East again, Doro. Make believe I won’t
get even!”
“When Garry comes East again you won’t have any chance to get even with
Dot, my dear Tavia,” laughed Nat. “She won’t even know that you and I
exist.”
“She doesn’t know it now,” retorted Tavia, with a meaning glance at her
chum who was completely absorbed in Garry’s letter.
“Well, can you blame her?” Nat’s voice had softened until it reached
only Tavia’s ears. “She’s got what we have and—it’s a pretty good thing
to have, isn’t it, girl?”
“Nat, I never knew I was living before,” confessed Tavia softly, and
after that it was very lucky for them that Dorothy was too absorbed in
her letter to notice them!
Garry was well. So much Dorothy learned from the letter, written in his
usually cheery vein. But, though he actually said little about it in
words, Dorothy could read between the lines well enough to see that
something was worrying him. He spoke lightly in one place of the “gang”
that was trying to “get fresh” with him and “put a spoke in his wheel.”
Although he spoke lightly of the whole affair, Dorothy sensed the fact
that he was worried and was correspondingly anxious. If she could only
see Garry for a few moments she would worm the whole thing out of
him—for she knew how.
If she could only see him for a few moments! The thought and wish formed
itself in her mind and became a longing so acute that it was almost
pain.
To see Garry, just for a little while. To lean upon his strength, to ask
his advice and follow it. She knew she could do that without question.
Garry’s advice was always sound.
To have him with her! And she could effect this desired result by a mere
gesture! There was something thrilling in that thought. A telegram to
far-off Desert City and Garry would be at her side as soon as trains
could get him there.
It was a tempting vision but, as she knew, a selfish one.
Garry was having his hands full attending to his own affairs. Why should
she trouble him with her worries?
And, besides, this mysterious “gang” of which he spoke so lightly would
undoubtedly take advantage of his absence from the ranch to “get fresh”
in earnest.
No, she must not ask his aid—not just now.
At the thought she sighed and it was such a deep and hearty sigh that
the irrepressible Tavia giggled.
Dorothy started and half rose from her chair in dismay, so completely
had she forgotten the presence of Tavia and Nat in the room. Meeting the
laughing gaze of the two in the window seat she relaxed again, smiling a
bit sheepishly, and gathered up the various pages of her letter.
“Was it so dreadfully sad, Doro?” teased Tavia. “Dare you to read me the
last page?”
“That isn’t a fair dare and not a bit sporting of you, Tavia Travers,”
retorted Dorothy, with mock primness. “Dare me something within the
bounds of possibility and I may take you up!”
“Is he coming on soon?” Tavia persisted, and Dorothy slowly shook her
head.
“He is very busy on the ranch,” she said, adding with an unsteady little
laugh: “I guess any one who wants to see Garry in the near future will
have to go out West.”
How little did she know that these words, spoken carelessly enough, were
to prove prophetic!
The doctor came as he had promised at eleven o’clock and, after a
thorough examination of the Major, talked gravely and seriously to Mrs.
White and Dorothy.
“His heart is not in as good condition as I should like to see it,” he
told them. “He has not been in vigorous health for some time, as you
know. And now the best medicine I can recommend—besides a tonic, for
which I will leave you a prescription—is absolute rest and quiet and a
mind free from worry.”
He noticed the quick look that passed between Dorothy and Mrs. White at
these last words and his eyes seemed to be boring into the former as he
asked quietly: “Has Major Dale been subjected to a severe shock during
the last two or three days?”
As simply as possible Dorothy told him the facts about Joe. The
physician listened with every evidence of sympathy and concern.
“Too bad, too bad!” he murmured at last. “There is no way, I suppose,
that word of his father’s condition might be sent to the lad?”
“No, doctor,” answered Dorothy despairingly. “We have not the slightest
idea where Joe is!”
The physician nodded soberly and rose to go, leaving behind him a final
admonition that, as far as it was possible, the Major’s mind was to be
kept free of worry.
“And he might just as well ask us,” remarked Dorothy, as from an
upstairs window they watched the doctor drive away, “to give him the
moon!”
Mrs. White came and put her arms about Dorothy, and the girl put her
head down on her aunt’s shoulder and wept a little.
“It all seems so strange and upside down and tragic, Aunt Winnie,” she
said, after a minute, wiping her eyes on a small square of handkerchief.
“Always before when anything dreadful like this happened, I have had
some idea what I ought to do, but now I am all at sea. Don’t you think,”
she added, holding her aunt off from her and looking at her seriously,
“that we ought to notify the police, set a detective on his trail, or
something?”
Mrs. White looked thoughtful for a moment, but she finally shook her
head.
“That would be publishing to the world Joe’s connection—if there is
one—with the Haskell store fire,” she said. “And, for Joe’s sake, that
is the last thing any of us wants to happen.”
“But meantime something dreadful may happen to the boy—he is only a boy,
after all, Aunt Winnie,” wailed Dorothy. “He may be in danger——”
“He hasn’t met with any accident, we are sure of that,” Mrs. White
interrupted reassuringly. “And if he has run away, thinking that he
might be connected in some way with the fire, he will return when he
thinks the alarm has died down.”
“But in the meantime he may be in danger,” reiterated Dorothy. “It seems
dreadful to have a boy of Joe’s age roaming around the world alone and
unprotected. Aunt Winnie, we must do something. We must!”
“We are doing something, dear,” Mrs. White reminded her soothingly. “Ned
and Nat are leaving no stone unturned to discover the whereabouts of the
lad and they are not going to stop hunting until they find him. And now
go back to your father, my dear,” she added. “You seem to be the only
one who can content him just now.”
“No one knows what may happen to Daddy if we don’t find Joe soon!”
muttered Dorothy, as she turned to leave the room.
It seemed that Dorothy Dale had her full share of trouble just then but,
as it happened, fate had still a little more in store for her. And,
indeed, it would probably have been the straw too much if Tavia, with
her native tact, had not kept the worry from her.
For Roger, the youngest of the family, had felt Joe’s disappearance more
keenly perhaps than any of the others, because he had less philosophy to
bear his sorrows.
And since his admission to Dorothy that his brother had been in the
company of Jack Popella on the day of the fire, his conscience had
troubled him rather badly and his one thought was to get Joe and beg his
pardon for his perfidy before some one else could tell him of it.
With this thought in mind, Roger started out bravely and manfully to
find his older brother. He left the house early in the afternoon,
presumably to play with some of the neighborhood children, and his
prolonged absence was not remarked till nearly dinner time.
Then it was Tavia who, looking up the boy for the purpose of herself
asking him some question concerning Joe, learned that he had been absent
for several hours.
“I may be an idiot to worry,” she said, taking her suspicions to Nat,
“but I do think that we ought to set out on the trail of that youngster
and bring him back before Doro has a chance to discover his absence.
What do you think?”
“That you are right, as usual,” returned Nat, with a fond glance at the
pretty Tavia. “We’ll be back in jig time with that young cousin of mine
by the collar.”