“No, that won’t be necessary. I left the horses on up the road about twelve miles,” Mr. Eldridge answered. “I’ve had the road repaired so you can drive the car to the foot of the mountain.”
“Why, that’s grand!” exclaimed both girls together. “Not that we don’t like to ride horseback,” added Jo Ann, “but we can travel so much faster in Jitters.”
After many words of farewell Florence and her father drove off down the highway which led to the town farther into the interior where they lived.
In a few more minutes, Jo Ann was steering Jitters out of the village and into the road which led to the mine. She had only two other passengers now, as Carlitos insisted on riding on the horse with Pepito.
Just as she was about to pass a little shack on the outskirts of the village, she caught sight of an empty old Ford parked under a mesquite tree just off the road. She stared at it incredulously, then cried out a sharp, “Oh, there’s that same car we—” She checked her words suddenly, swerving the car dangerously near an irrigation ditch at the side of the road.
“Mercy!” gasped Miss Prudence from the back seat. “What are you trying to do—turn us over?”
Jo Ann’s face flamed with excitement and embarrassment.
“No’m,” she said meekly as she drove on slowly. “I—I—really—I don’t—see why I did such a silly trick.”
Under cover of the car’s noise, a little later, Peggy asked curiously, “What on earth made you so excited over seeing that old car?”
Jo Ann’s voice was barely audible as she replied, “Because it was the car Florence and I saw hidden up in that gully in the desert. Smugglers.”
“O-oh! Are you absolutely sure?”
Jo Ann nodded. “It had the same license number, and the radiator was bumped in exactly the same places.”
CHAPTER VIII
AT THE MINE
When they neared the foot of the lofty mountains and the end of the automobile road, Jo Ann parked the car in front of a small thatched adobe house. “This is the jumping-off place,” she smiled. “Here’s where we leave Jitters and get our horses.”
Miss Prudence eyed the house curiously. “This must be where Ed told me we were to change into our riding clothes. He said for us to be ready by the time he and the boys got here. I don’t fancy going into a strange house in a strange—” She stopped abruptly as a fat, smiling-faced Mexican woman appeared at the open door and began beaming her welcome and punctuating her Spanish with gestures for them to come inside.
Summoning her limited Spanish, Jo Ann replied with a “Gracias,” then turned and translated the woman’s welcoming words to Miss Prudence.
After a moment’s hesitation Miss Prudence followed the girls into the house. Her keen eyes quickly took in the room, which had a neat, well-kept appearance in spite of its dirt floor and primitive furniture.
The woman disappeared into the other room, evidently the kitchen, as they could hear her rattling dishes and beating vigorously with some utensil.
“I hope she’s making us some chocolaté,” Jo Ann whispered to Peggy as they slipped into their khaki riding trousers.
“I hope so too. I’m hungry as a bear. Mountain air always gives me a ravenous appetite.”
“Here, too. I could wrap myself around a substantial meal right now, and it’ll probably be two hours yet till we reach the mine—and supper.”
As Jo Ann’s thoughts turned on the distance to the mine, she wondered how she would be able to get back to the city and find the mystery man. Now that she had seen the car of those suspected smugglers in the village so close by, she felt it was more imperative than ever for her to tell the mystery man about them and their whereabouts. “I’ve simply got to get in touch with him some way,” she told herself.
So intent was she upon these thoughts that she did not heed Peggy’s nudging her till she squealed out, “Can’t you put on your boots, Peg, without poking me in the side?”
“Oh, I most humbly beg your pardon,” Peggy replied, her twinkling eyes showing that her apology was anything but abject.
Catching her gesture, a nod of the head in Miss Prudence’s direction, Jo Ann looked over at Miss Prudence. The next moment her eyes opened in astonishment. That long, full, navy skirt Miss Prudence had on—how on earth was she ever going to ride in that thing? That must be one of those old-fashioned side-saddle riding skirts she’d heard her grandmother talk about. It’d be absolutely dangerous to ride side saddle in this mountainous country. She’d often heard how easily such a saddle was tipped out of balance and the rider thrown off. The next moment she relaxed as the thought occurred to her that there were no side saddles in this part of the country. Perhaps she’d better tell her that.
Somewhat embarrassed, Jo Ann stammered, “Er—Miss Prudence—er—they don’t have any—side saddles down here.”
Miss Prudence looked puzzled as she replied Yankee-fashion with a question, “Well, who wants one?” Seeing the girls’ eyes fastened on her skirt, she smiled, “This isn’t one of those old side-saddle riding skirts. It’s a divided skirt.” There was a note of pride in her voice as she added, “I was the first woman in my part of the country to begin riding astride. I shocked the older people dreadfully.”
“I think you were a good sport, Miss Prudence, to start that style,” Peggy remarked.
Miss Prudence received this praise with a pleased smile.
Just then the Mexican woman entered with a tray of food which she set on a little table near by. Gesturing and talking rapidly to Jo Ann, she explained, “I think you have much hunger, and I make you some chocolaté.”
Though Jo Ann’s reply was made in broken Spanish, it was straight from her heart. “Gracias. You are most kind. We have hunger after the long ride. And chocolaté—I love it.” She raised the cup to her lips and drank a little of the rich, frothy liquid. “This is very delicious.”
Peggy and Miss Prudence nodded a smiling approval to the woman, and her black eyes glowed with happiness at the praise, both spoken and unspoken.
A few minutes after they had finished eating, Mr. Eldridge and the two boys rode up.
On going outside Jo Ann saw that there were three other horses saddled and waiting for them. She noticed, too, that José, Pepito’s father, was standing near by, his arms caressingly about Carlitos, whom he loved almost as dearly as he did his own son. Carlitos’s face was aglow with happiness at being reunited with his Mexican friends.
After she and Peggy had mounted, they watched with curious eyes to see how Miss Prudence manipulated that queer skirt. When they saw her unbutton the front panel and fold it back and refasten it on another set of buttons, they saw that it was a divided skirt after all.
Peggy leaned over from her horse to murmur to Jo Ann, “It looks like a pair of floppy-legged pajamas now.”
Jo Ann nodded, then added, grinning, “I prefer to sleep in pajamas and ride in trousers. It’s so much more modest.”
Peggy suppressed a giggle with difficulty at the thought of the proper Miss Prudence’s ever wearing anything but the most correct clothes.
Notwithstanding the queer skirt, they found that Miss Prudence rode unusually well, handling her horse with the ease of an experienced horsewoman.
Up the steep mountain trail they began climbing in single file, José in the lead. The sheer precipice at the edge looked so dangerous to Jo Ann that she tried to keep from looking over. One good thing, they had an excellent guide in José. He had led her and Florence over worse places than this.
On nearing the mine a strange feeling of tenseness filled the girls and Carlitos; and yet that was not surprising, as the mine had been the scene of the most thrilling adventures they had ever experienced. It was here that they had been rescued from the treacherous mine foreman who had stolen the mine from Carlitos’s father.
On their arrival at the great stone house that this foreman had so proudly built for his own use, they found José’s wife, Maria, the nurse who had reared Carlitos as one of
her family. Though she was only a poor ignorant woman of the peon class, the girls as well as Carlitos loved her.
“Maria has a heart of gold,” Jo Ann told Miss Prudence as they watched her enfold Carlitos in her arms and kiss him on each cheek. “She loves him as she does her own Pepito and her girls.”
A few minutes later Maria proudly showed Carlitos to his room, into which she had put the best of everything, then took Miss Prudence and the girls to adjoining rooms, which looked bare and forbidding with their concrete floors, scant furniture, and curtainless, iron-barred windows.
“Looks like a soldiers’ barracks,” Miss Prudence said crisply after a swift glance about.
Jo Ann laughed, then said, “You should have seen this house as it was the first time I saw it. There was a grand piano in every room with a game rooster tied to one of the piano legs.”
Miss Prudence gasped. “A rooster in every room! Heavens! You mean to say this whole house was a chicken coop?”
“Not exactly. It was just that Mexican foreman’s idea of the luxurious life. He loved music and cock fighting, so he wanted the pianos and roosters handy.”
“Heavens!” gasped Miss Prudence again. “Why, I must fumigate this whole house, clean it with Old Dutch Cleanser, Lysol—”
“Oh, Maria cleaned it long ago—thoroughly,” broke in Jo Ann quickly, seeing that the anxious-eyed Maria was watching Miss Prudence’s frown of evident disapproval and was worried. She turned now to Maria and said in Spanish, “The house is very clean. You have worked hard.”
Maria’s grave eyes brightened. “Yes, the little girls and I work hard.” She gestured to the window and the corners of the room. “See, I clean it good like Carlitos’s mamá show me.”
Though Miss Prudence had caught from these gestures that Maria was showing how thoroughly she had cleaned the house, she was far from being convinced that it was fit for human habitation. Again she broke into a list of the different kinds of cleansing materials and things that she would need.
“We’ll have to go to the city to get all those things,” put in Peggy. “They won’t have them in the little store in the village.”
Jo Ann’s eyes suddenly began to shine. Here was her chance to get back to the city to find the mystery man. She could stop in the village and find out what those smugglers were doing there. Maybe they were buying baskets and pottery from the villagers. She’d soon find out now.
The first moment she and Peggy were alone she told her of her plans.
Peggy laughed. “I knew that’s what you were planning. You can’t resist a mystery, can you?”
“And you’re almost as eager as I am to have a finger in my mystery pie. You know you’re crazy to go to the city with me.”
“Of course I am.”
CHAPTER IX
MISS PRUDENCE’S CLEANING SPREE
Before dropping to sleep that night Jo Ann decided that as soon as she got up in the morning she would urge Miss Prudence to let her and Peggy go to the city. “I’ll tell her what this house needs worse than another cleaning is some pretty cretonne for curtains and pillows, and some of the lovely Mexican pottery and bright-colored blankets. I could stop at the village and buy the pottery and blankets. There were some pieces of pottery outside that shack near where the smugglers’ car was parked. That’d give me a grand chance to find out from the family in the shack about the smugglers. Then I’d have more to tell the mystery man—if I can find him. Finding him—that’ll be the hard part.”
Still visioning ways and plans for this trip to the city, she finally drifted off to sleep.
She was roused early the next morning by a cold hand upon her bare shoulder. Horrors! One of those smugglers had grabbed her—she’d jerk away from him! She sprang out of bed with a leap that sent her into the middle of the room, then stood staring dazedly at an amazed Miss Prudence.
“Why, I didn’t mean to frighten you, Jo Ann,” she said apologetically. “I just meant to wake you early so—”
“O-oh, it’s just you!” gasped Jo Ann, feeling very foolish at seeing it was only Miss Prudence. “I must’ve been dreaming. I thought one of those—” She stopped abruptly. She must not say a word about having seen those smugglers. No use to get Miss Prudence stirred up and excited over them.
“I’m sorry I scared you,” Miss Prudence began again, “but I thought we ought to get an early start to—”
“But we’re at the end of our journey,” broke in Peggy, who was sitting up in bed now, rubbing her eyes sleepily. “We don’t have any place to start early to.”
“What I began to say was that we ought to get an early start at giving this house a thorough cleaning,” Miss Prudence went on, undisturbed by Peggy’s interruption.
“The house looks clean to me—very clean,” Jo Ann remarked.
“Maria may have gone through the motions of cleaning, but”—Miss Prudence raised her eyebrows skeptically—“a peon housekeeper’s ideas of cleaning and an American’s are two different things.”
“Don’t you want us to go to the city to get some—some fumigating stuff—formaldehyde, isn’t that what you call it?” Jo Ann asked eagerly.
“No, I’ve decided it isn’t necessary to have the place fumigated. I’ve decided there’s enough laundry soap here to begin with. Ed says he’s ordered more, and a lot of supplies that should have come to the village yesterday. He thinks they’ll come today surely. I’ll make plenty of strong suds, and we can begin scrubbing this morning. When we get through, this place’ll be as bright as a new penny.”
“It’ll still be dreadfully bare, though,” Jo Ann remarked tentatively. “As you said last night, it looks as bare as a barracks. What it needs is gay cretonne draperies and pillows, bright-colored blankets to throw over the chests and couches, and some of the lovely Mexican ollas. As soon as we get the house clean, let’s go to the city to get the draperies. We can probably find some pottery and blankets at the village.”
“Well, we’ll think about that later.”
“The sooner we get this house fixed up, the longer we’ll have to enjoy it,” spoke up Peggy, coming to Jo Ann’s aid. She knew how Jo Ann’s heart was set on getting back to the city. “Let’s try to have it all done by the time Florence comes.”
“Well, we’ll see.”
The girls had to content themselves with that vague promise.
After Miss Prudence had left the room and the girls were dressing, Jo Ann remarked, “I haven’t given up hope yet of going to the city soon. I’m going to try to persuade Miss Prudence to let us go to the village this afternoon for the supplies that Mr. Eldridge is expecting.”
“I’ll help persuade her.” Peggy changed the subject abruptly by saying, “I hate to have her hurt Maria’s feelings by doing all this cleaning, don’t you?”
Jo Ann nodded. “I’ll try to smooth it over to Maria, but she’ll never be able to understand such extreme ideas about sanitation.”
As soon as they had finished eating breakfast, the girls entered industriously into Miss Prudence’s “cleaning spree,” as Jo Ann called it. While Peggy poured the soapy water over the concrete floors, Jo Ann scrubbed vigorously enough to satisfy even Miss Prudence.
“It’s really fun,” Jo Ann declared as she swished the foamy suds about with her broom.
Miss Prudence, a towel over her head and her long skirts tucked up and pinned in the back, bustled about superintending the girls, Maria and her oldest daughters, and the two boys.
Maria was horrified that Miss Prudence should set Carlitos, the chief owner of the silver mine and the house, to doing such menial tasks as carrying water from the stream back of the house. Miss Prudence, however, believed with St. Paul that he who would not work should not eat and soon had everybody in the household stepping lively.
“I wish that soap and other supplies’d come today,” she said, frowning as she took out the last bar of soap. “The supplies are very low. I can’t plan a decent meal in this house without those things.”
“Peggy and I’ll go to the village for them this afternoon,” Jo Ann offered eagerly. “We can drive the car and make better time than José can in the oxcart.”
Miss Prudence hesitated a moment, then replied, “Well, if José can go with you, I believe you’d better go.”
“Fine! I’m sure Mr. Eldridge’ll let José go. He sends him there frequently for the mail—every other day, I believe.”
Jo Ann was right in this surmise. Mr. Eldridge promptly agreed to let José accompany the girls to the village. “José can take two burros along to carry the supplies,” he added, “and he won’t need the oxcart at all.”
So it was that shortly after lunch the two girls and José started on horseback but changed into the automobile when they reached the foot of the mountain.
On reaching the village they drove straight to Pedro’s store to see if the supplies had come. On finding that they had arrived, José set to work to load them into the car. While he was busy at that task, Jo Ann and Peggy walked back to the adobe shack where Jo Ann had seen the smugglers’ car.
To Jo Ann’s relief, the battered old car was not in sight.
“I’ll have a far better chance to find out about the smugglers without their being on the scene,” she remarked to Peggy.
As soon as they neared the shack, a thin, undernourished woman with a black rebosa about her shoulders and a baby in her arms appeared at the door. Peeping from behind her skirts were several other small, half-clad, hungry-looking children. As quickly as she could in her broken Spanish, Jo Ann explained that she wanted to buy some of the pottery jars piled up at the side of the house.
The woman shook her head and replied, “I have much sorrow that I cannot sell them to you. Two men in an automobile told me they take all my ollas.”
“Was that their automobile I saw here near your house yesterday?”
The woman nodded.
“I must find out when they will be back,” Jo Ann thought quickly. “Can you not get more jars for these men by the time they come back, and sell me some of these you have now?” she asked tentatively.
The Second Girl Detective Megapack: 23 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls Page 101