  “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: “Did their work and they did it right. Come, come, coma, Coma, coma, kee. Coma, coma, coma, Kee, kee, kee.” “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: “Two cowboys who were jolly and gay Wished to go adventuring the next day. Come, come, coma, Coma, coma, kee. Coma, coma, coma, Kee, kee, kee.” Then, acting out the words by a little strutting, they sang lustily: “Two cowboys who were brave and bold Took two girls in a rattletrap old. Come, come, coma, Coma, coma, kee. And that’s all of it If you’ll come with me.” 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: “The two cowboys were on mystery bent. They went somewhere, but you’ll know where they went If you’ll come, come, coma, Come in our old ’bus, Come, come, coma, Come with us.” 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. “Two cowboys with a big appetite They could eat flapjacks all day and all night. Come, come, coma, Coma, coma, kee. Those cowboys, Jerry, Are You and me.” Back of them a laughing voice chanted, “Verse six.” “Two cowgirls are ready for a lark. Oho-ho, so let us embark. Come, come, coma, Coma, coma, kee.” Dick and Jerry sprang up and joined the chorus with: “We’ll coma, coma, coma With glee, glee, glee.” |
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