The Second Girl Detective Megapack: 23 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls

by Julia K. Duncan

  “I could have had dinner sent up while I was bathing,” Marshmallow grinned. “I’m only fooling. Here, let me sign the register.”

  The party was escorted to its rooms on the fifth floor. Their quarters were all in a row on the corridor. Kitty and Doris shared a room that communicated with Mrs. Mallow’s through a joint bath.

  Refreshed by shower baths and slightly more formal attire than the traveling costumes they had worn in the plane, the girls joined their three companions in the lobby and amused themselves by watching the traffic and pedestrians until Mrs. Mallow came down. They all entered the dining room for dinner, and enjoyed the repast fully. “And now, what do you say to a movie?”

  Marshmallow suggested. “With ice cream sodas after?”

  Doris, Kitty and Dave, of course, voted for the suggestion. Pete and Mrs. Mallow preferred sleep.

  “I’m going to read a while and then turn in,” the aviator said. “An early start tomorrow?”

  “Any time you say,” chorused the four. “Breakfast at seven, then, and in the air before eight-thirty.”

  Mrs. Mallow had no objections, and so the party divided according to its choices. Doris and her companions spent a couple of hours watching the antics of a motion picture actor who played the part of a heroic air mail pilot, and obtained more enjoyment from Dave’s whispered criticism than from the picture.

  After the show, Marshmallow discovered something new to him, a shop specializing in hot tamales and Mexican tortillas, but the three others contented themselves with sodas.

  “You ought to try these,” Marshmallow coaxed, tears trickling down his cheeks from the effects of the hot chile peppers. “There are lots of Mexicans where we are going, and you ought to get the proper atmosphere.”

  “I can’t dream of eating anything that would make me feel as bad as that seems to make you feel,” Doris replied.

  Marshmallow dashed the tears from his eyes and took another bite of tortilla spread with chile con carne.

  “He reminds me of the Walrus in ‘Alice in Wonderland.” Dave laughed. “Don’t you remember? He cried because he had to eat the oysters, but relished them just the same.”

  The quartet sauntered back to the hotel and separated with cheery good-nights.

  At a few minutes before seven o’clock the next morning the entire party was assembled in the dining room, vacant at that early hour except for a few traveling salesmen.

  Breakfast finished and baggage assembled, with Wags brought up from the basement kennels, bills paid and bellboys tipped, the travelers were in taxicabs headed for the airport before eight o’clock had struck.

  Pete had telephoned ahead to the flying field, and the airplane was already standing in the runway with a full load of gasoline, while a pair of mechanics tested every part for loose bolts or other weaknesses.

  “All’s one hundred per cent, Captain,” the manager of the airport reported, as Pete led the group to the airplane.

  The pilot started the motors, which responded to perfection. The propellers blew a gale, almost knocking the substantial Marshmallow off his feet as he stood in the line of the backwash stowing the baggage aboard.

  Mrs. Mallow needed no urging to enter the ship this time. She took her seat like a veteran air tourist, and the others went to the chairs they had occupied the previous day.

  Louder roared the motors, and Pete taxied the plane across the broad field to head into the wind. Swaying and bumping over the ground the great ship rushed forward, and then soared into the morning air so smoothly that, as Marshmallow expressed it, you could eat soup from a knife without spilling a drop.

  “My, what flat country,” Mrs. Mallow observed, as they were winging their way over the famous corn belt on the great prairies.

  Doris had purchased an armload of magazines at the hotel stand, and Marshmallow, of course, had seen to it that substantial lunches had been packed into the hamper.

  Between reading and watching the checkerboard of farms passing beneath, the morning went by swiftly.

  Once Dave turned and gesticulated to the passengers, pointing downward.

  “The Mississippi!” Doris exclaimed, catching sight of the broad, silver-edged yellow stream, impressive even at an altitude of three thousand feet.

  Lunch was eaten somewhere over Missouri, and some time later attention was diverted from a majestic thunder storm marching across country far to the north, to view the purple mass of the famous Ozark Mountains in Arkansas, to the south.

  “And look! Oil wells!” shouted Doris. “We are getting near the end of our trip!”

  The skeleton steeples of the oil well “riggings” pointed up at the flyers in clusters all over the landscape.

  A great smoky city came into view.

  “That must be Tulsa,” Marshmallow called out, consulting his maps. “We’re over Oklahoma now!”

  An hour later Oklahoma City was reached, and at the municipal airport Pete brought the aircraft down.

  “Don’t stray away, folks,” he said. “I’m just refueling, and then we’ll go on.”

  “That will just give me time to get an ice cream cone,” Marshmallow said. “Will you all have one? Name your flavors.”

  The air tourists stretched their legs in a brief walk. It was very hot and the air was dry as the breath of a furnace.

  “It’s not quite five o’clock,” Pete said. “We have just about three hundred miles to go, so we’ll land in daylight. Let’s go!”

  “Here comes Marshmallow,” Kitty exclaimed. “With—bottles of pop! Goody! I’m thirsty.”

  “Marshmallow, you are a life saver,” they all hailed the perspiring youth as he panted up, a veritable human refreshment stand.

  “We’ll have our ‘tea’ in the air,” Mrs. Mallow said. “I hope the man doesn’t want the bottles back.”

  “I gave him two cents deposit on each one, so it’s all right,” Marshmallow said. “He’s out six bottles and I’m out twelve cents.”

  Knowing that they were near their destination the travelers abandoned magazines to scan the territory below. The bright red clay soil of Oklahoma made a startling background for the vivid green of the irrigated fields. Odd-shaped hills dotted the landscape, and there was great excitement when an Indian village of real tepees was crossed.

  “Although it’s probably a Wild West show from New York giving a performance,” Marshmallow said cynically.

  Dave was flying the ship now, while Pete pored over charts.

  The sun was a huge disc of crimson on the saw-edged horizon when the great airplane pointed its nose downward, its new home reached at last.

  A sprawling white house in a grove of cottonwoods, and an artificial lake with a host of white, red-roofed outbuildings was spread out below like a toy farm. A conspicuous new structure, with “G Clef Rancho” painted on the roof, was obviously the hangar.

  A herd of several hundred red, white-headed cattle stampeded as the airplane roared down owr their pasture, bu| the people hurrying from every building on the place let them go their way.

  “Oh, the foolish people!” Doris exclaimed. “Someone will be hurt! Why don’t they keep off the landing field!”

  Pete leveled off about twenty feet above the ground and roared over the assembled ranchers, but instead of scattering to the edges of the field the men and women and children stationed themselves all over the place, cheering with delight.

  Again and again Pete Speary had to repeat his maneuver until he was practically dragging his wheels over the sombreros the men wore, before someone had the good sense to order the people back.

  At last the wheels of the ship touched ground. The great metal bird coasted to a lialt opposite the private hangar, and with a final roar the motors were stilled.

  “And now our real adventure begins,” Doris cried. “All out for Raven Rock!”

  CHAPTER IX

  At Crazy Bear Ranch

  “Where is Madame Bedelle?” Pete inquired of the first person to reach the air tourists as
they stepped out of the plane.

  “Ah, Senor! How sad Senora Bedelle not see you arrive!” exclaimed the swarthy majordomo, removing his amazingly huge sombrero with a flourish. “She not expect you before mana—tomorrow—she is far on upper range inspecting new bunk house. Tonight she arrive back.”

  With white teeth flashing against his dark skin the ranch foreman bowed again and stood very erect, awaiting orders.

  “We had better find a place for us to stay,” Mrs. Mallow said.

  “Is there any ranch around here that accommodates travelers?” Doris asked. “Or is there a hotel at the town, wherever that is?”

  “Ah, Senora, no good hotel for high born people at Raven Rock,” mourned the foreman, his face as expressive of sorrow as if he were reporting that Raven Rock had just been wiped out by a tornado. “But at Crazy Bear, ah! Nice place, good food! Big rancho!”

  “Good food?” Marshmallow pricked up his ears. “But did he say at the crazy house?”

  “No, no, Senorl Crazy Bear Rancho. Dat her name. Plenty people from East—Kansas City, Little Rock, Dallas—comes to stay in Spring when she is not such hot weazzer,” the sombreroed one explained.

  “We might look into it,” Mrs. Mallow said. “And where is this ranch?”

  “Oh, ver-ry close by, Senora! ’Bout fifteen mile west. Next door dey live.”

  “Whew! Fifteen miles to the next-door neighbor,” Kitty exclaimed. “Imagine running next door to borrow a cup of sugar!”

  “How in the world will we get there?” Mrs. Mallow asked.

  “Oh, easy!” laughed the foreman. “I ask Ben, he drive you.”

  “Is Ben the local taxi man?” Dave asked. “Tax-ee? No sabby tax-ee,” shrugged the ranchero. “Ben, he boss Senora Bedelle’s trac-tor-rs. He tiene—he got car. Very good car. He take you to Crazy Bear in fi’ minute.”

  “Say, that’s going some!” Marshmallow gasped. “Fifteen miles in five minutes in a car? Whew!”

  “I call Ben,” bowed the foreman, sweeping the ground with his sombrero.

  Pete, who had been inspecting his motors, rejoined the group.

  “I’ve secured quarters here,” he explained. “If Miss Bedelle were here I’m sure she’d put you up, too.”

  “We are under sufficient obligations to Miss Bedelle,” Mrs. Mallow smiled. “Thank you for being so considerate, but I think we shall find accommodations. When shall we see you again?”

  “Oh, I’m going to stick around a long time,” the aviator grinned. “I’ve a contract to teach Miss Bedelle to fly, and that will take a month and a couple of planes, if she is as temperamental as opera singers are supposed to be.”

  The tall, swarthy ranch-man appeared, shouldering his way through the crowd of open-mouthed natives, with a muscular, grease-stained, stocky figure in tow.

  “If you will give me ze privilege,” the foreman bowed, “I weesh introduce Ben Corlies, very nice gentleman, who drive all machinery here.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” growled Ben. “But if Miss Bedelle thinks I’m going to take care of that there cloud-scatterin’ contraption for her she is dead wrong.”

  “Of course—I—we don’t know anything about that at all,” Mrs. Mallow said, taken aback at the unexpected remark. “This gentleman here said you would drive us over to the next ranch where we might find accommodations.”

  “Why, you bet your boots!” exclaimed Ben.

  “Nothin’ would please me better, if only to show you that there ain’t no sense to flyin’ when you pan travel safe on the ground.”

  “We should be very grateful,” Mrs. Mallow said. “And whatever the usual charge is—”

  “Charge nothin’,” Ben snorted. “Us folks out here don’t go pin a price on every little lift we give strangers. Do you want to start right now? I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  He turned and loped around the corner.

  “See, Senora?” the swarthy ranchero smiled. “Ben he fix everyt’ing queekl Nice mans, Ben Corlies.”

  “Thank you for bringing him to our aid,” Doris said. “Here he comes back already—Marshmallow, there’s a car that ought to make you green with envy.”

  Ben Corlies was driving up in a touring car, if not as old as Marshmallow’s revered antique, then ten times as experienced. The paint had long since been destroyed by desert heat and alkaline sands. The tires were of solid rubber, the top was dismantled and the windshield cracked. Relic as it was, the car had once been of very expensive make, and the motor, although loud, seemed hitting on all twelve cylinders.

  “Pile in, folks. Room for everybody,” Ben sang out. “I’ve carried twelve folks in here two hundred miles in one afternoon.”

  Pete helped stow the baggage in, and with some squeezing the five ex-aeronauts found places in the car also, with Wags electing Doris’s lap.

  “You folks expect to be out here long?” Ben asked as he shot forward, scattering natives right and left as Pete had been unable to do with his plane.

  “Oh, for quite a while,” Doris answered.

  “Well, Raven Rock is sure looking up,” Ben commented. “Town ain’t got but fifty people in it if it is the county seat—’though the township countin’ all the ranches must have nigh five hundred countin’ Mexicans and Indians. Usually it’s too hot here exceptin’ for us natives, in the summer. But lately quite a few strangers is been scoutin’ round. You int’rested in oil?”

  “Crude, or cod liver?” Marshmallow responded. “Not that it makes any difference,” Doris added hastily. “We are out here for a vacation.”

  “I can think of lots better places to go,” Ben snorted. “Ain’t nothin’ to do here but kill rattlers an’ watch mirages.”

  “Is that your job on the ranch?” Doris asked. “Me? Ha!” Ben laughed. “No, I run all Miss Bedelle’s machinery. Her electric light plant, and her tractors, and her cars when she needs a shaw-fer. That big chap you was talkin’ to is the cow boss. He’s a Mexican—but that means three-quarter Indian. Nice feller when he ain’t mad.”

  “Miss Bedelle must have a big ranch,” Doris suggested.

  “Well, there’s some bigger but none better,” Ben boasted. “She makes it pay, too. Raises cotton, alfalfa, pure-bred Hereford cattle and good horseflesh, too. Danny Sumpter, he’s the boss horse-wrangler. You want to meet him. Old Indian fighter.”

  At this juncture conversation lagged, for the passengers had all they could do to hang on as the car roared over what might be a road but resembled more the dried bed of a stream.

  It was fantastic country. Hills with sides as sheer as castle walls, built in layers of red, black, white and yellow rock rose in the landscape. Wind and sandstorms had carved them into shapes suggestive of animals, giants and mythological figures.

  On the level grew flat-leaved prickly pear cactus and saw-leaved soap-weed or yucca, mesquite and unrecognized shrubs, and a coarse, rank grass. Herds of white-faced cattle dotted the landscape, and huge-eared jackrabbits sat up without fear to watch the car go by.

  “The real Wild West, all right,” Marshmallow said, risking a bitten tongue. “N-never saw anything so gay. Those mountains look like Neapolitan ice cream!”

  “I—I almost wish I was back in the airplane,”

  Mrs. Mallow confided to Kitty. “I never saw such a road, and such speed!”

  Ben, however, steered with one hand, using the other to point out features in the landscape.

  “We call that little mesa over there George Washington Hill,” he said. “If you look on the north side, there, you’ll see a sort of outline of his face. And that there is Dead Man Canyon, on account of the skeleton, a giant big one, they found—”

  And so on.

  At last, topping a rise, the travelers saw another grove of cottonwoods ahead, a sign of water and human habitation.

  A few minutes later a curl’of smoke could be distinguished mounting into the darkening sky, and then lights flashed in the shadows.

  “That’s Crazy Bear Ranch now,” Ben said,
clearing his throat and raising his voice in a bloodcurdling yell that made everyone wince.

  “We signal to each other like that, so if anyone is busy he can stop workin’ and come down to the road to talk a bit,” he explained.

  Sure enough, when the ranch was reached half a dozen men were sitting on the fence.

  “Hi, Ben!” they chorused.

  “Hi, Bill! Hi, Pedro! An’ Lew an’ Ike and the rest of you,” Ben replied. “Bill, I brung you some boarders.”

  “Well, now, that was right thoughtful of you, Ben,” drawled one of the men, rising and approaching the car. “Git off an’ light, folks.”

  “Cowboy clothes!” Doris whispered. “Look!”

  Bill—and all the others, for that matter—wore floppy leather chaps, spurred boots, and neck-kerchiefs.

  “I am Mrs. Mallow,” that lady introduced herself. “These are my young friends, Miss Doris Force and Miss Norris.”

  “I’m shore proud to meet you, ladies,” grinned Bill. “My name is Bill Saylor.”

  “And this is my son Marshall, and our friend Mr. David Chamberlin.”

  “Boys, howdy!” Saylor smiled, reaching out a horny hand. “Now, just you come with me to the house an’ meet the missus. The boys here will tote in your luggage.”

  Adieus were said to Ben, who seemed insulted when payment for the drive was mentioned, and then all followed Bill Saylor to the house.

  It was too dark to distinguish much except a very long one-story building with more doors than windows. Framed in the light that streamed from one of the former was a woman.

  “Got company, Ma!” Bill called out.

  “You’re sure welcome,” said Mrs. Saylor, who proved to be a slender woman of rather less than middle age. “And I’ll bet you’re hungry.”

  Marshmallow emitted a faint moan.

  “I’ll take you right to your rooms. I expect you are staying over night? Then we can talk afterwards, but right now you’ll want to wash.”

  Mrs. Saylor led the way through a gleaming kitchen through a back door and into a grassy courtyard. Then the visitors realized the house was built in the form of a hollow square surrounding a grass plot about sixty feet square in which a pool reflected the first star of the evening overhead, and in which a tall poplar rustled in the breeze.