“These hills are all ‘miocene’ formation,” Plum explained. “They are full of fossils of camels and giant ground sloths, horses with toes and other weird creatures. I’ve guided geological expeditions many times.”
“Camels! In America?” Kitty marveled.
“Yes, and elephants, too,” Plum said. “In early formations, laid bare where the waters have cut deep in the gullies, one sometimes finds remains of dinosaurs, real dragons.”
“I’m glad I’m in the present,” Marshmallow said, lovingly contemplating a chicken sandwich. “Suppose a scaly dinosaur poked his head over the top of the hill and took a bite out of this.”
“He’d find you a more luscious morsel than the sandwich,” scoffed Doris. “Look, there goes Miss Bedelle’s airplane!”
All looked aloft at the great metal bird which, flashing in the sun like molten silver, came roaring into view.
“Geewhillikers,” mourned Dave. “My hands itch to grab a joy-stick again!”
All waited for some signal from the plane, to signify that Pete had seen his erstwhile companions below, but none came.
“Well, that’s—hey!”
“Why Marshmallow, what’s the matter?” Kitty exclaimed.
“Matter! Matter enough,” howled the youth. “Our lunch is gone!”
Sure enough, the hamper had vanished from under their very noses.
Plum got to his feet.
“Such things don’t happen,” he said.
“Well, cut yourself a piece of cake, then,” Marshmallow retorted. “Help yourself to a banana.”
“Probably you conjured up the ghost of a dinosaur with your talk, and he ate the lunch,” Dave said solemnly.
“This is no joke,” Doris said, looking about her wildly.
“Yes, it is,” Dave laughed, reaching behind a big boulder and producing the missing hamper.
“You were all so busy looking at the plane I couldn’t resist throwing a scare into Marshmallow. A meal without dessert to him would be like pie without a crust or filling.”
“I’ll get even with you,” Marshmallow growled, looking into the hamper to see that nothing was unduly missing.
He was not one to bear a grudge, however, and Marshmallow’s indignation was drowned in the contents of a vacuum bottle of cold lemonade.
It was a tired but, at least for Doris, a wiser party that trooped into the ranch yard that evening. Dusty, saddle-sore and hungry, they taxed the water capacity of the Crazy Bear’s reservoir by demands for baths.
“I’d be happy if only I could find my purse,” Mrs. Mallow said after supper. “There is no bank in Raven Rock and I will have a tiresome journey to get my letter of credit honored.”
Plum was most solicitous over Mrs. Mallow’s loss. He questioned her closely about the missing purse, and was eloquent in trying to comfort her.
“It will turn up all right,” he said. “The trouble is you have too much time to worry about your loss. Tomorrow you must ride out with me. I want to show you those Indian ruins.”
He escorted Mrs. Mallow to the hammocks under the cottonwoods, discoursing spiritedly on the charms and wonders of the great Southwest.
Doris watched the middle-aged couple move off in laughing conversation.
“Plum seems to find Mrs. Mallow very interesting company,” she said, turning to Dave with a smile.
“I don’t blame him,” Dave grinned. “If I were only twenty-five years older I’d jump at the chance of acquiring such a charming son as Marshmallow, here.”
“Oh, go stick your head in the watering trough,” Marshmallow said.
“Wouldn’t it be lovely if we found ourselves, in the middle of a romance,” Kitty laughed, joining in the fun. “I wonder if Mr. and Mrs. Plum would take up ranching. Would yoti invite us to your round-ups, Marshmallow?”
“I’ll lasso that foolish surveyor and brand him,” Marshmallow threatened. “What does he mean, forcing himself on my mother like that?”
Dave sensed that Marshmallow was not enjoying the conversation, and changed the subject.
“There is going to be a grand moon,” he said. “Let us walk up to that little hill just over there, and Doris—will you sing for us?”
“I’d love to,” Doris said, simply and sincerely. “I’ve been yearning to sing just as you have been yearning to fly, Dave.”
The four chums sauntered slowly toward the round butte that rose a hundred yards or so from the house. Doris walked silently, her mind busy with the facts she had learned that day, facts which convinced her that unscrupulous, greedy men were her opponents in the contest for the property. She debated with herself the advisability of summoning aid from one or another of her uncles.
Yet, a few minutes later, it was a sweet, untroubled voice that rose through the moon-silvered air in the lovely old tune of “Sweet Alice Ben Bolt.”
CHAPTER XIV
The Clouds Gather
“I am going to drive over to the ruined cliff dwellings with Mr. Plum this morning,” Mrs. Mallow announced at the breakfast table next morning.
“Won’t you all come along?” she added. “It will be very interesting.”
Marshmallow looked distinctly annoyed.
“Dave and I heard the men at the corral talking about a bull-dogging contest ‘near here today,” he said. “We thought we might all go over and see it.”
“What is it, a sort of dog show?” Doris asked mischievously.
“No,” Dave explained. “It hasn’t anything to do with dogs. Cowboys ride up to a free steer and wrestle it to the ground by the nose and horns. It is very exciting, and dangerous.”
Kitty wrinkled her nose.
“And cruel,” she added.
“I want to ride into town,” Doris said. “I intend to poke through the—stores.”
“Well, it looks as if we separate for the day,” Marshmallow commented. “Tell Plum he can use the car, Mother. Dave and I are going to ride over with the cowboys on horseback.”
Kitty and Doris watched Plum and Mrs. Mallow drive off, and then swung into their saddles.
“Don’t you try any bull-dogging,” Doris warned Dave. “I prefer you in one piece.”
“I won’t go at all, if you like,” Dave offered. “I’d just as soon ride into town. I need a haircut.”
“Ain’t no barber in Raven Rock, pard,” laughed one of the horse-wranglers. “We just uses the hoss-clips on ourselves, here.”
Everybody laughed, and Doris and Kitty touched spurs to their ponies and trotted off toward town, Wags sitting on the horse with Doris.
“Just compare this with sitting back in a cabin plane at a hundred miles an hour,” gasped Kitty through the bitter dust, as the girls jogged along. Eventually Raven Rock was reached.
“What’s all the excitement?” Doris wondered. For Raven Rock something unusual was astir. Usually two persons seen at any one time in the street constituted normal traffic, but fully a dozen men and two or three women were headed toward the railroad station.
From afar came the wailing whistle of a locomotive. The pedestrians doubled their pace.
“Hear that?” a stranger called to the girls as they drew rein in the plaza. “That’s ol’ Number Ten, the Kansas City Limited, whistlin’ for a stop. Always uster go through here so fast we never could count the cyars!”
“This must be history in the making for Raven Rock,” Doris laughed. “Let’s see the important people who are getting off the Limited.”
The crack train thundered into the little adobe town, overshooting the station by fifty yards in its haste. Curious townsfolk surged forward toward the Pullmans.
“Look, Kitty, even our friend who backed into us is down to see the train come in,” Doris exclaimed. “There is his car.”
Just then an unusual movement beneath the last car caught Doris’s eye.
It was the dining car, and from the space created by the steps and the folding section of floor that drops over them when the door of the car is closed, a pair o
f legs emerged.
Unseen by anyone but the two girls, a slender male figure squirmed to the ground and ran hurriedly to the station, rubbing cinders from his eyes.
“Kitty! Look at that man! It’s the stowaway!” gasped Doris.
“As I live and breathe, it is! He got here anyhow,” her chum exclaimed. “Well, you must admire his pluck.”
“Here come the important people who stopped the Limited,” Doris said.
Trailed by the little crowd of townsfolk, whose attention was obviously divided between the great train now beginning to move and the passengers who had honored Raven Rock by disembarking, three men strode over the cinders.
“Why—why, they are with Henry Moon, the man who backed into us,” Doris gasped. “Then they must be—oh, Kitty!”
“Doris, what is the matter? You are as white as a sheet!” Kitty cried.
“That dark-faced man. He—he—oh, I’m sure he is one of the men who robbed Uncle Wardell!”
Kitty joined Doris in staring at the three men. “Have them arrested!” she said. “Quick!”
“How can I?” Doris wailed. “I can’t prove that they are crooks! Oh, look at them! If only Uncle Wardell were here!”
The two recent passengers on the Limited jumped into Moon’s car, while that worthy took his place behind the wheel and stepped on the starter. The mechanism whirred, but the car did not move.
Doris and Kitty saw Moon’s lips curl. He reached into a pocket of the car and took out a crank, then climbed from the automobile.
The stowaway slouched forward.
He spoke to Moon, as if suggesting a bargain. Moon gave the youth the crank and resumed his place at the wheel.
The stowaway began cranking the car with a vigor surprising in one so slightly built. Soon the engine coughed, backfired, and roared into life.
Moon let in the clutch and as the car shot forward. The youth leaped to the running board and climbed into the back seat.
“They’re going out beyond the town,” Kitty cried, but Doris had already seen Moon’s hands twist the wheel. She dug the spurs into her horse’s flanks, and the startled animal bolted down the road.
Kitty, amazed and wondering, whipped after her.
In less than a minute Doris heard Moon’s horn wailing behind her. Without’ slacking the rangy gallop of her mount, she reined to the right side of the road.
As the car shot past, Doris had a good look at the four occupants, all of whom were staring at her with unconcealed admiration.
“That stowaway is some relative of Miss Bedelle, I’m sure,” Doris thought, as the car passed. “He is the black-sheep brother, and that man beside him is the scar-nosed scoundrel who was talking over the telephone near Plainfield when I was calling the airport. Get along!”
Doris plied whip and spur, and the cow-pony’s unshod hoofs drummed on the clay. The game little horse was no match for a powerful motor, however, and soon the automobile was so far ahead, Doris knew she had no chance of trailing it.
She reined in her horse and reluctantly turned its head back toward Raven Rock.
“Poor fellow,” Doris said, leaning over to pat the animal’s forehead. “It’s cruel making you run so hard on a hot day, but I wish you were a motorcycle for half an hour.”
* * * *
A mile back Doris saw Kitty advancing toward her at an easy lope, Wags panting far in the rear.
“D-Doris!” gasped that young woman. “I— never—saw anybody ride—like you did! I couldn’t—begin to keep up with—you! Whew!”
“I hoped to see where those scoundrels were going,” Doris replied soberly. “But I failed. Kitty, we are in for trouble. I had planned to ask Uncle Wardell to come out as quickly as he could, but we can’t wait. We just have to get back those stolen deeds!”
CHAPTER XV
Oil!
“Let’s get off and rest,” Kitty begged. “Then we can plan, too.”
Doris led the way to a grove of pinons, scrubby evergreens which bear an edible nut.
“I’m glad to lie down,” she sighed, as she flung herself on the fragrant needles that covered the ground.
Side by side in the shade on top of the knoll the girls silently watched the ponies grazing on the coarse grass.
“Kitty,” said Doris at last, “you remember the time we had the blow-out on the way to the airport, the day we started for Raven Rock?”
“Indeed I do,” Kitty replied. “I skinned a knuckle helping Marshmallow take off the spare.”
“I went to a road-stand to telephone, you remember,” Doris went on. “Well, in an adjoining booth a man was telephoning in a mixture of Spanish and English. He was telling somebody over long distance that he was starting out with the deed at once.”
“Why did you keep it a secret?” Kitty asked, a little hurt.
“I told Dave, and he telephoned to the police,” Doris explained. “I thought it best to say no more because it would do no good and only worry the rest of you.”
“Well, go on,” Kitty urged. “What about him?”
“I saw the man when he left the booth, and he had a scar over his nose, just like the man who visited the Gates twins, and who attacked Uncle Wardell.”
“Doris! Why, I should have screamed!”
“No, you wouldn’t have,” Doris laughed. “Anyhow, that is the man who got off the train a moment ago. I recognized him then and made sure of it when he passed me in the automobile again!”
“Oh, what will you do?” Kitty cried.
“That’s just what I don’t know,” Doris admitted. “One thing is certain. He and his pal brought the stolen papers with them, and Moon is the master mind behind the whole crooked piece of business.”
“Doris! Then they can prove ownership of the land between the Saylor’s ranch and Miss Bedelle’s!” Kitty exclaimed. “There must be some way to stop them.”
“I don’t trust the man in the court-house,” Doris continued. “He doesn’t know his business at all, and I think if it came to a showdown between three men with lots of money—and the deeds—and a girl who hadn’t anything to prove her story, there is no doubt who would win.”
“Let’s ride back to the ranch, find out where the boys are and consult them,” Kitty suggested.
“I guess four heads are better than two in a mixup like this,” Doris agreed, rising.
The ponies, trained not to stray when the reins were flung over their heads, were mounted. Doris, first in the saddle, instinctively let her eyes stray over the circumference of the horizon. The strange scenery would never grow wearisome to her, she thought. It was like being on the moon or some other distant world.
Then, suddenly, a volcano seemed to leap into life just a few miles away.
“Kitty!” cried Doris. “Look!”
“D-Doris! What is it? An explosion?”
A tall black plume that mushroomed at the top into a whirling smudge of ugly brown mounted into the sky.
“I don’t know—it looks like a geyser,” Doris marveled. “But geysers aren’t black. Let’s go see.”
“Look down there,” Kitty pointed back toward the town. “Others are coming to look, too.”
A string of horsemen could be seen galloping up the road, lashing their mounts. A couple of automobiles, loaded beyond capacity, cut through the riders and hid them in dust.
“Come on, Kitty!” Doris shouted, wheeling her pony. “We’ll beat them all!”
They did not. The ponies, still winded from the first gallop, were passed by some of the riders on fresher horses. That was just as well, for the leaders soon left the road and cut across lots, and the girls followed.
Both automobiles, forced to stick to the road, lost their first-won advantage.
“Oil, oil, oil!” was shouted by everyone.
It was a five-mile run that exhausted horses and riders, but weariness was forgotten when the girls caught sight of the wild scene.
The spurt of crude oil shot into the air in a column as thick as a man’s
body. Straight up it surged for a hundred feet or more before the wind caught it and whipped the high-pressure fluid into yellow spume.
“I’m glad the wind is blowing the other way from us,” Kitty said.
The bowl-like valley from whose center the oil spouted was littered with lumber, shattered remains of the drill rigging, and dotted with what seemed to be the entire population of the county.
“There is Moon’s car,” Doris pointed.
“How do they catch the oil?” Kitty wondered. “It will all be wasted, it seems to me,”
Her curiosity was shortly satisfied. Under the bellowed orders of a straw-boss, scarcely heard above the roar of the spouting oil, a gang of men dragged gigantic mats toward the gusher. Others advanced with what seemed to be the world’s biggest wrenches. It was all very confusing to the two girls, and to most of the other spectators, too.
All that they knew was that a fascinating battle was being fought between puny men and one of Nature’s greatest forces, unleashed.
Time and again the men advanced, only to have their tools whirled high into the air.
Then, as suddenly as it had started, the oil ceased to spout.
A cheer arose from the workers and spectators alike.
“They capped itl Hooray!?’
Another gang was busy throwing up walls of earth to conserve the oil flooding the ground.
“Well, that was thrilling,” Doris said. “Even if it just means another setback for us. Oil! That is really why they want the land.”
“Why, Doris! Would you believe it,” Kitty exclaimed, “it is way after three o’clock. We’ve been here hours and hours.”
“I guess we had better go back to the ranch,” Doris said.
They were halted by a “hello” from the milling crowd around the capped well.
“Hi, Doris! Kitty!”
“It sounds like Dave and Marshmallow,” Doris exclaimed. “But I don’t see them. Oh, can that be they?”
Two inky-faced figures on black ponies were spurring up the slope toward the girls.
“What is this, an Uncle Tom’s Cabin show or a minstrel?” Doris laughed, as Dave and Marshmallow, bathed in oil, galloped up on oil-soaked ponies.
The Second Girl Detective Megapack: 23 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls Page 35