  “Jerry, what did you do with the box?” Mary managed to whisper as the cowboy drew out a chair for her at the supper table. “In the old barn loft, snug and safe,” he replied. Then he sat beside her. Dora and Dick, on the opposite side of the long table, beamed across, eager anticipation in their eyes. Although they had not heard the few words their friends had spoken, they felt sure that they had been about Little Bodil’s box. “We won’t wait for your father, Jerry,” Mrs. Newcomb had said. “He may have gone in somewhere for shelter if he happened to be riding in the path of the storm.” The kerosene lamp hanging above the middle of the table had a cherry-colored shade and cast a cheerful glow over the simple meal of warmed-over chicken, baked potatoes, corn bread, sage honey and creamy milk, big pitchers of it, one at each end of the table. For dessert there was apple sauce and chocolate layer cake. Mr. Newcomb came in before they were through, tall, sinewy, his kind brown face deeply furrowed by wind and sun. His eyes brightened with real pleasure when he saw the guests. Dora, he had met before, and Mary he had known since she was a little girl. He shook hands with both of them. “Wall, wall, if that sand storm sent you girls this-a-way, I figger it did some good after all.” Jerry glanced at his father anxiously when he was seated at the end of the table opposite his wife. “Dad, do you reckon any of our cattle were hit by it?” he asked. The older man helped himself to the food Mary passed him, before he replied, “No-o, I reckon not. I was riding the high pasture when I heerd the roaring. I went out on Lookout Point and stood there watching, till the dust got so thick I had to make for the canyon.” It was Dick who spoke. “There aren’t many cows pastured down on the floor of the valley, anyway, are there, Mr. Newcomb? There’s so much sand and only an occasional clump of grass, it surely isn’t good pasture.” “You’re right,” the cowman agreed, “but there’s a few poor men struggling along, tryin’ to eke out an existence down thar. I reckon they was hit hard. I knew a man, once, who had a well and was tryin’ to raise a garden. One of them sand storms swooped over it, and, after it was gone, he couldn’t find nary a vegetable. Either they’d been pulled up by the roots and blown away or else they was buried so deep, he couldn’t dig down to them.” “Oh, Uncle Henry,” Mary smiled toward him brightly, “I see a twinkle in your eye. Now confess, isn’t that a sand-story?” “No, it’s true enough,” the cowman replied, when Jerry exclaimed: “Dad, I know a bigger one than that. You remember that man from the East, tenderfoot if ever there was one, who started to build him a house on the Neal crossroad? He heard the storm coming so he jumped on his horse and rode into Neal as though demons were after him. When the wind stopped blowing, he went back to look for his house and there, where it had been, stood the beginning of a sand hill. The adobe walls of his unfinished house had caught so much sand, they were completely covered. That was years ago. Now there’s a good-sized sand hill on that very spot with yucca growing on it.” “Poor man, it was the burial of his dreams,” Dora said sympathetically. “He left for the East the next day,” Jerry finished his tale, “and—” “Lived happily ever after, I hope,” Mary put in. Mrs. Newcomb said pleasantly, “If you young people have finished your meal, don’t wait for us. Jerry told me you’re going out to the loft in the old barn for a secret meeting about something.” “We’d like to help you, Aunt Mollie, if—” “No ‘ifs’ to it, Mary dear.” The older woman gazed lovingly at the girl. “Your Uncle Henry and I visit quite a long spell evenings over our tea. It’s the only leisure time that we have together.” Jerry lighted a couple of lanterns, and the girls, after having gone to their room for their sweater coats, joined the boys on the wide, back, screened-in porch. “I’ll go ahead,” Jerry said, “and Dick will bring up the rear. We’ll be the lantern bearers. Now, don’t you girls leave the path.” “Why all the precautions?” Dora asked gaily, but Mary knew. “Rattlesnakes may be abroad.” She shuddered. “Have you seen one yet this summer, Jerry?” “Yes, this morning, and a mighty ugly one too; coiled up asleep in the chicken yard. I shot it, all right, but didn’t kill it. Before I could fire again, it had crawled under the old barn.” “Oh-oo gracious! That’s where we’re going, isn’t it?” Dora peered into the darkness on either side of the path. “I suppose it had a mate equally big and ugly under the barn?” Mary’s statement was also a question. Dick replied, “Undoubtedly, but if they stay under the barn and don’t try to climb up to the loft, they won’t trouble us any.” Mary, glancing up at the sky that was like soft, dark blue velvet studded with luminous stars, exclaimed, “How wonderfully clear the air is, and how still. You never would dream that a sand storm had—” She stopped suddenly, for Dora had gripped her arm from the back. “Listen! Didn’t you hear a—” “Gun shot?” Dick supplied gaily. “Now that we’re about to open up Little Bodil’s box, I certainly expect to hear one. You know we heard a gun fired, or thought we did, when we passed through the gate in front of Lucky Loon’s rock house, and again when old Silas Harvey was telling us the story. Was that what you thought you heard, Dora?” “No, it was not,” that maiden replied indignantly. “I thought I heard a rattle.” She had stopped still in the path to listen, but, as Jerry and Mary had continued walking toward the old barn, Dora decided that she had been mistaken and skipped along to catch up. Dick, sorry that he had teased her, evidently at an inopportune time, ran after her with the lantern. “Please forgive me,” he pleaded, “and don’t rush along that way where the path is dark.” Jerry turned to call, “We’re going in the side door, Dick.” Then anxiously, “You girls can climb a wall ladder, can’t you?” “Of course we can,” Dora replied spiritedly. “We’re regular acrobats in our gym at school.” Having reached the barn, Dick opened a low door, then holding the lantern high, that the girls might see the step, he assisted them both over the sill and followed closely. Mary was standing in the small leather-scented harness-room, looking about the old wooden floor with an anxious expression. “I was wondering,” she explained when the light from a lantern flashed in her face, “if there are any holes in the floor large enough for those rattlers to crawl through.” “I’m sorry I mentioned that ugly old fellow,” Jerry said contritely, “and yet we do have to be constantly on the watch, but we’re safe enough now. Here’s the wall ladder and the little loft storeroom is just above us. The only hard part is at the top where one of the cross bars is missing.” Dick suggested, “We boys can go up first and reach a hand down to the girls when they come to that step.” “Righto,” Jerry said. “I’ll leave my lantern on the floor here. You take yours up, old man. Then we’ll have illumination in both places.” The girls had worn their knickers under their short skirts as they always did when they went on a hike or a mountain climb and so they went up the rough wall ladder as nimbly as the boys had done. The last step was more difficult, but, with the help of strong arms they soon stood on the floor of the low loft room. All manner of discarded tools, harness and boxes were piled about the walls. Dora was curious. “Jerry, why did you select this out-of-the-way place for Bodil’s trunk?” “Because I reckoned no one would disturb us. The Dooley twins overrun the old barn sometimes but they can’t climb up here with the top board missing.” The battered leather box lay in the middle of the room and the two girls looking down at it had a strangely uncanny feeling. Jerry evidently had not, for he was about to lift the lid when Mary caught his arm, exclaiming, “Big Brother, what was it Silas Harvey said about a ghost? I mean, didn’t Mr. Pedersen threaten to haunt——” The interruption was the crackling report of a gun that was very close to them. “Great heavens, what was that?” Mary screamed and clung to Jerry terrified. “It wasn’t a ghost who fired that shot,” the cowboy told them. “It was someone just outside the barn. Don’t be frightened, girls. It can’t be anyone who wants to harm us. Wait, I’ll call out the window here.” Jerry pulled open a wooden blind and shouted, “Who’s there?” His father’s voice replied, “Lucky I happened along when I did. An ugly rattler was wriggling, half dead from a wound, right along the path here and its mate was coiled in a sage bush watching it.” Dora seized Dick’s arm. “I heard it!” she cried excitedly. “That’s what I heard when you began to—” “Aw, I say, Dora,” Dick was truly remorseful, “I’m terribly sorry. I just didn’t want you to be using your imagination and frightening yourself needlessly.” Mary sank down on a dusty old box. “I’m absolutely limp,” she said. “Now, if a ghost appears when we open that trunk, I’ll simply collapse.” |
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