But the searchers were soon convinced that Betsy was not hiding to
tease. Peyton lighted all of the heavy brass hanging lamps but they
did little to illumine the long, dark room. Indeed, their dim light
made the corners darker and more ghostly than they had been before.
Each girl was carrying a lantern and the room was searched more
thoroughly than it had been by Virginia alone.
“Perhaps Betsy climbed out of a window and is hiding out doors,”
Babs suggested.
“That would be an impossible feat,” Peyton replied, “for, in common
with all Spanish houses, these windows are barred.”
As he spoke the lad turned and walked toward the fireplace. He
looked into its cavernous opening and carefully examined the walls
and chimney. Turning back into the room, Peyton met Virginia and
they exchanged discouraged glances. “I simply cannot understand it,”
the boy said in a low tone.
Before Virginia could reply, a startled cry rang out. They both
whirled, expecting to see Betsy, but instead it was Babs who was
gazing at one of the barred windows as though she had seen the ghost
about which she had been talking.
Peyton leaped to her side. “Barbara,” he said, “why are you staring
at the window in that wild way? I can see nothing.”
“No, you can’t now,” the girl replied. “It is gone—the face—”
“I believe that mischievous Betsy Clossen is outside peering in at
us and laughing to think how she is fooling us all,” Virginia said
in almost a natural tone. “I know her of old. She loves to tease.”
But Babs shook her head as she continued to gaze at the barred
window.
“It wasn’t Betsy,” she whispered. “It was a dark face. I think
Trujillo.”
“Girls, you come back to the kitchen,” Peyton said, “and bar the
door after me. I am going to see if Betsy Clossen is really hiding
outside. If she is the kind of a girl who would cause you all this
concern just to play a prank, I think you would better send her back
East when she is found.”
“I, too, thought at first that she was hiding to tease,” Margaret
said, “but Betsy really has good common-sense and she would not
continue to frighten us in this way. Now, I am sure that something
has happened to her.”
Peyton was much more troubled than he wished the girls to know. It
was his house and they were his guests, and his sister’s. Too, he
had been quietly watching his new Mexican overseer for the past few
weeks, as some of his actions seemed very strange.
Then Peyton left the kitchen.
“Oh, how I do wish this mystery was solved,” Margaret declared as
she sank down in a rocker, her eyes watching the closed door leading
into the front room, but almost instantly she was on her feet again
clutching Virginia’s arm.
“Look! Quick!” she whispered. “Didn’t the door open a crack?”
Virginia laughed. “No, no, child,” she replied. “Don’t let your
imagination run riot. I am sure there is some perfectly natural
commonplace reason for Betsy’s disappearance. You girls know
perfectly well that there is no such thing as a ghost. You hear
stories about them but you never met a single person who ever saw
one.”
Then they were silent, just waiting, they knew not for what.
In the meantime Peyton had gone down to the bunk-house.
The lad knew that the girl could not have left the room by any of
the exits known to him. The front door had been heavily barricaded
by the Spanish Don on the inside and as Peyton did not use that
room, he had not opened the massive wooden doors. The windows were
barred and the only door of which he had knowledge was the one
leading into the kitchen. Suddenly he recalled that there was
another door but he had found it locked, with no key in evidence,
and believing it led into a store room of some kind, he had thought
little of it.
When Babs had cried out that she had seen a face peering in at one
of the barred windows, a dark face that looked like Trujillo’s,
Peyton had determined to go at once to the bunk-house and find out
the whereabouts of his head rider.
There was a very long adobe building in which the ten peons lived
together. Not far from it was one small solitary adobe which had
been built for the overseer of the Three Cross Ranch. It was in this
that Trujillo slept, although he took his meals with Peyton at the
big house. The owner of the ranch felt that this was a courtesy due
his head rider, and, moreover Trujillo had served him well by saving
his cattle on the day of his first appearance in the wild March
blizzard.
As he thought of these things, he rebuked himself for having doubted
the loyalty of his Mexican cowboy in whom he had so much faith that
he had placed him in charge of the entire ranch, and yet, try as he
might to banish it, he could not but agree with Betsy that there was
something very mysterious about Trujillo.
The long adobe was lighted and the Mexicans squatting on the floor
were intent on a game which they played every evening.
Peyton quietly passed the open door and did not attract their
attention. He went at once to the overseer’s adobe dwelling. It was
dark. The door was standing open and in the faint light of the
rising moon, Peyton could see that the single room was unoccupied.
“Trujillo,” he said softly, but there was no response.
Peyton, troubled indeed, turned back toward the ranch house. He did
not inquire of the peons the whereabouts of Trujillo, for the
overseer never associated with his helpers although he treated them
kindly.
What should he do? What could he do? The lad was thinking as he
again ascended the steps and entered the kitchen door. It was then
that he heard a crash followed by a shrill cry in the front room.
Instantly the girls were on their feet and they were all staring at
the closed door when it burst open and Betsy Clossen rushed in. Her
face was very pale and she was so excited that at first she could
not speak.
“Betsy, is it really you?” Barbara exclaimed joyfully as she caught
her friend in her arms.
“I’m not sure certain it is, myself,” Betsy replied as she sank down
in a rocker. “I’ve had the most exciting experience.”
The others gathered about her. “Do tell us just what happened,”
Virginia said.
“Well, when you left me standing alone in the dark room, I happened
to take a step backward and that caused me to sit down very suddenly
in a big mahogany chair. I caught at the arms and I must have pushed
a button that was part of the carving. Instantly I realized that I
was slowly sinking, although it was so dark I could not tell just
what was happening. The floor seemed to have opened under me and
very quietly and easily the chair was descending like an elevator.
At last I was convinced that I had been let down through a
trap-door. I could hear it closing above me. I found myself in a
dark room. I didn’t dare leave the chair, however, so there I sat,
shouting lustily for help, but I could not make you hear. I must
have been there an hour when I decided that I would experiment with
the chair. I thought that if by pushing one knob I had caused it to
descend into the cellar-like room, there must be another knob that
would lift it again. At last I found such a contrivance, pushed it
and slowly the chair ascended. I gave a cry of joy when I was once
more in the front room, I sprang from the chair, knocking over a
small table which fell with a crash and here I am. Now that it’s all
over, I am glad that it happened. What an exciting experience it
will be to tell Cousin Bob.”
“And so you see, girls, the mysterious Trujillo had nothing to do
with it,” Virginia said.
Peyton, however, remembering the unoccupied bunk-house of the
overseer was still troubled, but a moment later his fears concerning
the loyalty of his cowboy were set at rest. The galloping of a
horse’s feet was heard and then a hallooing. Peyton swung open the
door and Trujillo stood there.
Rapidly in Spanish he told the other lad that one of the peons had
reported early in the evening that a yearling had fallen into a
water-hole and that together they had departed to endeavor to rescue
it. Luckily there was but little water in the hole and the young
cow, though greatly frightened, was unhurt and they had brought it
back to keep for a few days in the hospital corral.
This was all so commonplace that it restored the girls to a more
normal state of mind and Peyton rebuked himself for having doubted
his head rider who was ever serving him so faithfully.
“Now, let’s go to bed, girls, and forget all that has happened. We
are quite used to elevators and since we know that the Don, who
built this house, needed some way to hide quickly from his pursuers,
we can easily understand his descending chair. Tomorrow I intend to
take a ride in it.”
Virginia’s matter of fact tone calmed the younger and more nervous
girls and soon they retired.
The recent owners of the Three Cross Ranch had built a wing leading
from the kitchen. This contained two simply furnished bedrooms which
the four girls were to occupy.
Betsy Clossen was the last to fall asleep. She kept wondering where
she had seen Trujillo before. Nowhere, that she could remember, and
yet, if not, why did she seem to be haunted with the idea that she
had seen him.