“Blue Moons, Mary! What awful things you do think about!” Dora was a bit provoked. She was really sleepy, and thought she had earned a good rest for the remaining hours of the night. “Lots of animals creep away into far corners of dark caves when they know they’re going to die. That’s better than lying around helpless somewhere, and have wolves tearing you to pieces or vultures swirling around over you, dropping lower and lower, waiting for you to take your last breath. For my part, I think Sven Pedersen did a very sensible thing. In that way he was sure of a decent burial. Now, Mary dear, much as I love you, if you so much as peep again tonight, I’m going to take my pillow and go into the spare front bedroom and leave you all to your lonely.”

“Hark! What was that noise? Didn’t it sound to you like rattling bones?” Again Mary clutched her friend’s arm.

Dora gave up. “Sort of,” she agreed. “The wind is rising again.” Then she made one more desperate effort to lead Mary’s thoughts into pleasanter channels. “Wouldn’t it be great fun if Polly and Patsy could come West while we’re here?” she began. “I wonder how Jerry and Dick would like them.”

“How could anyone help liking them? Our red-headed Pat is so pert and funny, while roly-poly Poll is so altogether lovable.” Mary was actually smiling as she thought of their far away pals. Then suddenly she exclaimed, “Dora Bellman, that new friend of Pat’s, Harry Hulbert, you know; he really and truly is coming West soon, isn’t he?”

“Why, yes!” Dora was recalling what Pat had written. “Oh, Mary,” she exclaimed with new interest, “when he is a scout, hunting for bandits and train robbers and—”

Mary sat up and seized her friend’s arm. “I know what you’re going to say,” she put in gleefully. “This Harry Hulbert may be able to help solve the mystery of Bodil’s disappearance. But that’s too much to hope.”

Dora laughingly agreed. “How wild one’s imagination is in the middle of the night,” she said.

“Middle of the night,” Mary repeated as she looked out of the nearest window. “There’s a dim light in the East and we haven’t had half of our sleep out yet.”

Long-suffering Dora thought, “That certainly isn’t my fault.” Aloud she said, “Well, let’s make up for lost time.”

She nestled down and Mary cuddled close. Sleepily she had the last word. “I hope Harry Hulbert will come, and—and—Pat—”

At seven o’clock Carmelita’s deep, musical voice called, but there was no answer. The two sound-asleep girls had not heard. At ten o’clock they were awakened by a low whistling below their open windows.

CHAPTER VIII
SINGING COWBOYS

“What was that?” Mary sat up in bed, blinked her eyes hard to get them open, then leaped out, and, keeping hidden, peeped down into the door yard. Near the back porch stood Jerry Newcomb’s dilapidated old car, gray with sand. Two cowboys stood beside it, evidently more intent upon an examination of the machinery under the hood than they were of the house. Although they were whistling, to attract attention, they pretended to be patiently waiting. Carmelita had informed Jerry that the girls still slept.

Mary pirouetted back into the room, her blue eyes dancing. “The boys are going to take us somewhere, I’m just ever so sure,” she told the girl, who, sitting on the side of the bed, was sleepily yawning.

“Goodness, why did they come so early?” Dora asked drowsily.

“Early!” Mary laughed at her and pointed at the little blue clock on the curly maple dresser. “Dora Bellman, did you ever sleep so late before in all your life?”

“Yeah.” Dora seemed provokingly indifferent to the fact that the boys waited below, and that, perhaps, oh, ever so much more than likely, they were going adventuring. “Once, you remember that time after a school dance when the boys from the Wales Military Academy—”

Mary skipped over to the bedside and pulled her friend to her feet. “Oh, please do hurry!” she begged. “I feel in my bones that the boys are going somewhere to try to solve the mystery and that they want to take us with them.”

Dora’s dark eyes stared stupidly, or tried hard to give that impression. “What mystery?” she asked, indifferently, as she began to dress.

“I refuse to answer.” Mary was peering into the long oval mirror brushing her short golden curls. Her lovely face was aglow with eager interest. “There is only one mystery that we are curious about as you know perfectly well and that is what became of poor Little Bodil Pedersen.”

Although Mary was looking at it, she was not even conscious of her own fair reflection. She glanced in the mirror, back at her friend, and saw her grinning in wicked glee.

Whirling, brush in hand, Mary demanded, “What is so funny, Dora? You aren’t acting a bit natural this morning. What made you grin that way?”

“I just happened to think of something. Oh, maybe it isn’t so awfully funny, but it’s sort of uncanny at that. I was thinking that, pretty as you are on the outside, you’ve got a hollow, staring-eyed skeleton inside of you and that if I had X-ray eyes—”

Mary, with a horrified glance at her teasing friend, stuffed her fingers into her ears. “You’re terrible!” She shuddered.

Dora contritely caught Mary’s hands and drew them down.

“Belovedest,” she exclaimed, “I’m just as thrilled as you are at the prospect of going buggy riding with two nice cowboys whether we find poor Little lost Bodil (who is probably a fat old woman now) or solve any other mystery that may be lying around loose.”

Mary was still pouting. “It doesn’t sound a bit like you to pretend—”

Dora rushed in with, “That’s all it is, believe me! There, now I’m dressed, all but topping off. What do you think we’d better wear?”

“Let’s put on our kimonas until we find out where we’re going, then we’ll know better what to wear. Jerry may have an errand over in Douglas and, if so, we’d want to dress up.”

Mary’s Japanese kimona was one of her treasures. It was heavy blue silk with flowers of gold trailing all over it. Dora’s laughing, olive-tinted face reflected a glow from her cherry-colored silk kimona with its border of white chrysanthemums.

Carmelita, who was in the act of reheating the breakfast for the girls, who she felt sure would soon be coming, stared at them open-eyed and mouthed when she saw them tripping through the kitchen.

In very uncertain Spanish they called “Good morning” to her, then burst upon the boys’ astonished vision.

Dick, snatching off his sombrero, held it to his heart while he made a deep bow. Jerry, bounding forward, caught Mary’s two small hands in his. Then he held her from him as he looked at her with the same reverent admiration that he would have given a rarely lovely picture.

“I don’t know a word of Japanese,” Dick despaired, “so how can I make my meaning clear?” His big, dark eyes smiled at Dora, who gaily retorted, “We didn’t know that our prize costumes would strike you boys dumb. If we had, we wouldn’t have worn them, would we, Mary?”

“I’ll say not,” that little maid replied. “We’re wild to know why you’ve come when you should be roping steers or mending fences, if that is what cowboys do in the middle of the morning.”

“Oh, we’re going to explain our presence all right. We made it up while we came along—” Dick began, when Jerry interrupted with, “You girls have heard range-ridin’ songs, I reckon, haven’t you?”

“Oh, no,” they said together.

“That is, not real ones,” Dora explained. “We’ve heard them in the talkies.”

“Well, this is a real one all right. Just fresh from the—er—” Dick glanced sideways at Jerry who began in a low sing-song voice:

“Two cowboys in the middle of the night,”

Dick joined in:

“That,” said Dick with a flourish of the hand which still held his sombrero, “is why we have time to play today.”

The girls had been appreciative listeners. “Oh, isn’t there any more to it?” Dora cried “I thought cowboy songs went on and on; forty verses or more.”

“So they do!” Jerry agreed. “But I reckon this one is too new to be that long, but there is another verse,” he acknowledged.

Then in a rollicking way they sang:

Then, acting out the words by a little strutting, they sang lustily:

Dick bowed to Dora and Jerry beamed upon Mary.

“Oh, Happy Days! We’re keen to go,” Dora told them, “but where?”

The answer was another sing-song:

Carmelita, who had appeared in the kitchen door, started chattering in Spanish and Jerry laughingly translated, rather freely, and not quite as the truly deferential cook had intended. “Carmelita asks me to tell you girls that she has reheated your breakfast for the last time and that if you don’t come in now and eat it, she’s going to give it to the cat.”

“Oho!” Mary pointed an accusing finger at him. “I know you are making it up. Carmelita wouldn’t have said that, because there is no cat.” Then graciously, she added, “Won’t you singing cowboys come in and have a cup of coffee, if there is any?”

Jerry asked Carmelita if there was enough of a snack for two starved cowboys who had breakfasted at daybreak and that good-natured Mexican woman declared that there was batter enough to make stacks more cakes if Jerry wanted to fry them. She had butter to churn down in the cooling cellar.

Mary insisted that she be the one to fry the cakes, but Jerry and Dick insisted equally, that she should not, dressed up like a Japanese princess.

“Grease spatters wouldn’t look well tangled up in that gold vine,” Jerry told her.

With skill and despatch, Jerry flipped cakes and Dick served them. Then, while the girls went upstairs to don their hiking suits with the short divided skirts, the boys ate small mountains of the cakes.

“Verse five!” Dick mumbled with his mouth full.

Back of them a laughing voice chanted, “Verse six.”

Dick and Jerry sprang up and joined the chorus with:

CHAPTER IX
A VAGABOND FAMILY

Jerry assisted Mary up onto the front seat without question, then slipped in under the wheel. Dora climbed nimbly to her customary place in the rumble. Dick leaped in beside her. His frank, friendly smile told his pleasure in her companionship.

Dora’s happy smile, equally frank and friendly, preceded her eager question, “Where are we going, Dick? I’m bursting with curiosity. Of course I know it’s some sort of a picnic.” She nodded toward the covered hamper at their feet. “But, surely there’s more to it than just a lark. You boys wouldn’t have worked all night, if you really did, that you might just play today, would you?”

Dick leaned toward his companion and said in a low voice, “Shh! It’s a dire secret! We are on a mysterious mission bent.”

Dora laughed at his caution. “This car of Jerry’s makes so many rattling noises, we could shout and not be heard. But do stop ‘nonsensing,’ as my grandfather used to say, and reveal all.”

Dick sobered at once. “Well,” he began, “it’s this way. Last night, after we left you girls, Jerry was telling me about a family of poor squatters, as we’d call them back East. Some months ago they came from no one knows where, in an old rattletrap wagon drawn by a bony white horse. Jerry was riding fences near the highway when they passed. He said he never had seen such a forlorn looking outfit. The wagon was hung all over with pots and pans, a washtub, and, oh, you know, the absolute necessities of life. In the wagon, on the front seat, was a woman so thin and pale Jerry knew she must be almost dead with the white plague. She had a baby girl in her lap. The father, Jerry said, had a look in his eyes that would haunt the hardest-hearted criminal. It was a gentle-desperate expression, if you get what I mean. Two boys about ten sat in the back of the wagon, hollow-eyed skeletons, covered with sickly yellow skin, while seated on a low chair in the wagon was an older girl staring straight ahead of her in a wild sort of a way.”

“The poor things!” Dora exclaimed when Dick paused. “What became of them?”

“Well, the outfit stopped near where Jerry was riding and the man hailed him. ‘Friend,’ he called, ‘is there anywhere we could get water for our horse? It’s most petered out.’

“Jerry told them that about a mile, straight ahead, they would find a side road leading toward the mountains. If they would turn there, they would come to a rushing stream. They could have all the water they wished. And then, Jerry said, feeling so terribly sorry for them, he added on an impulse, ‘There’s a herder’s shack close by. Stay all night in it if you want. It’s my father’s land and you’re welcome.’”

Dora turned an eager face toward the speaker. “Dick,” she said, “I believe I can tell you what happened next. That poor family stayed all night in that herder’s shack and they never left.”

Dick nodded. “Are you a mind reader?” he asked, his big, dark eyes smiling at her through the shell-rimmed glasses.

“No-o. I don’t believe that I am.” Then eagerly, “But do tell me what possible connection that poor family can have with this expedition of ours.”

“Isn’t that like a girl?” Dick teased. “You want to hear the last chapter, before you know what happened to lead up to it. I’ll return to the morning after. Jerry said he had thought of the family all the afternoon, and that night when he got home, he told his mother, who, as you know, has a heart of gold.”

“Oh, Dick!” Dora interrupted. “Gold may be precious, but it isn’t as tender and kind, always, as the heart of Jerry’s mother.”

“Be that as it may,” the boy continued, “Mrs. Newcomb packed a hamper—this very one now reposing at our feet, I suppose—with all manner of good things and she had Jerry harness up as soon as he’d eaten and take her to call on their unexpected guests. They found the woman lying on the one mattress, coughing pitifully, and the others gazing at her, the little ones frightened, and huddled, the older girl on her knees rubbing her mother’s hands. The father stood looking down with such despair in his eyes, Mrs. Newcomb said, as she had never before seen.

“‘There’d ought to be a doctor here,’ she said at once, but the woman on the mattress smiled up at her feebly and shook her head. ‘I’m going on now,’ she said in a low voice, ‘and I’d go on gladly,—I’m so tired—if I knew my children had a roof over their heads and—and—,’ then a fit of coughing came. When it passed, the woman lay looking up at Jerry’s mother, her dim eyes pleading, and Mrs. Newcomb knelt beside her and took her almost lifeless hand and said, ‘Do not worry, dear friend, your children shall have a roof over their heads and food.’ Then the mother smiled at her loved ones, closed her eyes and went on.”

There were tears in Dora’s eyes, and she frankly wiped them away with her handkerchief. Unashamed, Dick said, “That’s just how I felt when Jerry told me about the Dooleys. That’s their name. Of course, Mrs. Newcomb kept her word. That little shack is in a lovely spot near the stream with big cottonwood trees around it. After the funeral, Mr. Newcomb told the father that he and the boys could cut down some of the small cottonwoods upstream, leaving every third one, and build another room, so they put up a lean-to. Then he gave them a cow to milk and the boys started a vegetable garden. Mr. Dooley does odd jobs on the ranch, though he isn’t strong enough for hard riding, and the girl Etta mothers the baby and the little boys.”

“Have we reached that last chapter?” Dora asked. “The one I was trying to hear before we got to it? In other words, may I now know how this terribly tragic story links up with our today’s adventuring?”

“You sure may,” Dick said. “It’s this way. The Newcombs, generous as they have been, can’t afford to keep those children clothed and fed. Moreover they ought to go to school next fall and between now and then, some money must be found and so—”

“Oh! Oh! I see!” Dora glowed at him. “Jerry thinks that it is a cruel shame to have this poor family in desperate need when Mr. Lucky Loon has a tomb full of gold helping no one.”

Dick smiled. “Now I’m sure you’re a mind reader. Although,” he corrected, “Jerry didn’t just put it that way. But what he did say was that if we could find out definitely that Bodil Pedersen is dead and that there is no one else to claim that buried treasure, perhaps the old storekeeper, Mr. Silas Harvey, might give us the letter he has, telling where it is hidden.”

“Did Jerry think the money might be used for that poor family?” Dora asked.

Dick nodded. “He did, if Mr. Harvey consented. Jerry feels, and so do I, that if Bodil Pedersen hasn’t turned up in thirty years, she probably never will. Of course it would be by the merest chance that she would drift into this isolated mountain town, anyway, even if she is alive, which Jerry thinks is very doubtful.”

Dora was thoughtful for a moment. “Did Mr. Pedersen advertise in the papers for his lost sister?”

“We wondered about that and this morning we asked Mr. Newcomb. He said he distinctly remembered the story in the Douglas paper, and that afterwards it was copied all over the state.”

“Goodness!” Dora suddenly ejaculated as she glanced about her. “I’ve been so terribly interested in that poor family, I hardly noticed where we were going. We’ve crossed the desert road and here we are right at the mountains.”

“How bleak and grim this range is,” Dick said, then, turning to look back across the desert valley to a low wooded range in the purple distance, he added, “Those mountains across there, where the Newcomb ranch is, are lots more friendly and likeable, aren’t they? They seem to have pleasant things to tell about their past, but these mountains—” the boy paused.

“Oh, I know.” Dora actually shuddered. “These seem cruel as though they wanted people who tried to cross over them to die of thirst, or to be hurled over their precipices, or—” suddenly her tone became one of alarm. “Dick, did you know we were going up into these awful mountains?”

Her companion nodded, his expression serious. “Yes, I knew it,” he confessed, “but I also know that Jerry wouldn’t take us up here if he weren’t sure that we’d be safe.”

“Of course,” Dora agreed, “but wow! isn’t the road narrow and rutty, and are we going straight up?”

Dick laughed, for the girl, unconsciously, had clutched his khaki-covered arm. “If those are questions needing answers,” he replied, “I’ll say, Believe me, yes. Ha, here’s a place wide enough for a car to pass. Jerry’s stopping.”

When the rattling of the little old car was stilled, Jerry and Mary turned and smiled back at the other two. “Don’t be scared, Dora,” Mary called. “Jerry says that no one ever crosses this old road now. It’s been abandoned since the valley highway was built.”

“That’s right!” The cowboy’s cheerful voice assured the two in back that he was in no way alarmed. “I reckoned we’d let our ‘tin Cayuse’ rest a bit and get his breath before we do the cliff-climbing stunt that’s waitin’ us just around this curve.”

Dora thought, “Mary’s just as scared as I am. I know she is. She’s white as a ghost, but she doesn’t want Jerry to think she doesn’t trust him to take care of her.”

Dick broke in with, “Say, when does this outfit eat?”

“Fine idea!” Jerry agreed heartily. “Dora, open up the grub box and hand it around, will you? I reckon we’ll need fortifyin’ for what’s going to happen next.”

CHAPTER X
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!”

“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.

CHAPTER XI
THE SKELETON STAGE COACH

Mary, slender, light of foot, sprang like a gazelle from step to step feeling safe, since Jerry towered in front of her. The firm clasp of his big hand on her small white one made her feel protected and cared for and she was really enjoying the adventure.

Dora, athletic of build and sure-footed, refused Dick’s proffered aid, depending on the scraggly growths in the crevices for support until they reached a spot where only prickly-pear cactus grew.

“Now, Miss Independent,” Dick laughingly called up to her, “you would better put one hand on my shoulder and let me be your human staff.”

This plan proved successful until, in the descent, they came to a spot where the ledge below was farther than the girls could step. Jerry held up his arms and lifted Mary down. That was not a difficult feat since she was but a featherweight. Dora, broad shouldered for a girl and heavily built, was more of a problem. The boys finally made steps for her, Jerry offering his shoulders and Dick his bent back.

Dora, flushed, excited, glanced at the ledge above as she exclaimed, “Getting up again will be even more difficult.”

“We won’t cross bridges until we get to them,” Dick began, then added, “or climb mountains either. Going down at present requires our entire attention.”

But the narrow ledge-steps continued to be accommodatingly close for about fifteen feet; then another sheer descent was covered by repeating their former tactics.

“There, now we’re on the wide ledge,” Mary said, “and we can’t see a single thing that’s beneath us.” Then she cried out as a sudden alarming thought came to her. “Oh, Jerry, what if our weight should cause a rock-slide, or whatever it’s called, and we all were plunged—”

“Pull in on fancy’s rein, Little Sister!” the cowboy begged. “You may be sure I examined the formation of this ledge before I lifted you down upon it.” Then, turning to Dora, he said, “I reckon you and Mary’d better stay close to the mountain while Dick and I worm ourselves, Indian fashion, to the very edge where we can see what’s down below.”

“Righto!” Dora slipped an arm about Mary and together they stood and watched the boys lying face downward and wriggling their long bodies over the flat, stone ledge.