by Judy Delton
When Molly got off her horse, she felt as if her feet were numb! It felt funny to walk again!
“I have a little prize here for the best rider today,” said Chip.
“I’m sure it will be Rachel or Ashley,” said Tim.
“Since two of our Scouts already were riders, we won’t count them,” said Chip. “But for a beginning rider who was very brave, the prize goes to Lisa.”
Everyone clapped. Lisa was brave. She had courage. She had stayed on the horse even though she slid around, thought Molly.
Chip gave Lisa a little pin the same size as Patty’s lasso pin. This one had a wire horse on it.
“I rode just as well,” said Roger. “And I didn’t get a prize.”
“He’s so selfish,” said Mary Beth. “He’s never happy for anyone else to win. He has to win at everything.”
Well, Molly might not have won the prize, but she had ridden the horse and she had stayed on his back! And the best part was, riding the horse was over and she wouldn’t have to do it again. Now, if she could just find some way out of tomorrow’s square dance.
CHAPTER 6
Next Stop, Bone Junction
“Let’s all wash up and take a little trip into Bone Junction!” said Mr. Baker. “We have just enough time before supper. Andy is busy, but Chip said he’d come with us and show us the town.”
Molly changed her T-shirt and brushed her teeth. She combed her hair and tied a Western bandanna in it. She was ready to see her first ghost town!
The Pee Wees piled into the cars and set off. When they got to Bone Junction, the wind was blowing and howling around the empty wooden buildings. Chip explained how the town had been settled. He explained that when there was no more work and no gold, the settlers had moved on and left behind the bare bones of the village. He showed them the old mill, the old saloon, and the old drugstore. Some of the stores were open again, but they still looked old. The people who worked in them were dressed up in old-fashioned clothes.
In the saloon, there were sawdust and peanut shells on the floor. Chip bought the Pee Wees glasses of soda pop and some popcorn. There was a man with a camera taking old-time photos. Some of the Pee Wees put on frontier costumes and had their pictures taken. When they finished, Mr. and Mrs. Baker said, “Now we think it will be fun to take a stroll around the town. You can visit the old post office and see the barns where they kept the horses. There were no cars back in the old days, so horses and stagecoaches served as transportation. One of the old stagecoaches is in the barn across the street. You can even climb into it if you’re careful. We’ll be right there watching. Call us if you need us.”
Molly, Mary Beth, Tracy, and Patty went off toward the town square.
“I wonder where those bones Mrs. Peters told us about are,” said Patty.
“I hope we don’t see them,” said Tracy.
But Molly and Mary Beth had the urge to look for the bones. They looked in the town fountain and under it. They looked under the wooden sidewalks. They looked in some of the empty lots, kicking their way through patches of tumbleweed.
“Let’s go look at the stagecoach in the barn,” said Patty.
“I can’t go in barns,” said Tracy.
“There are no horses in the barn anymore,” said Mary Beth. “I don’t think the stagecoach will make you sneeze.”
The girls walked down the road to an old red barn. Molly pulled open a rickety, creaking door. There were cobwebs on all the windows, and it was dark inside. The girls crept in slowly, walking on tiptoe. The stagecoach was in the middle of the barn. It smelled like old leather. The stuffing was coming out of one of the seats, and one of the wheels was broken. The girls climbed on board.
“Real people rode in this once,” whispered Tracy. “They’re all dead now.”
Molly got a shiver down her spine. Rat’s knees, this was scary.
“What’s that over in the corner?” said Mary Beth, pointing under one of the dirty barn windows.
The girls stared where she pointed.
Patty squinted. “It looks like a pile of old wood,” she said.
“Or a pile of old bones!” said Tracy.
“It is bones!” shouted Mary Beth, who had run over to look.
Suddenly they heard a squealing noise overhead in the rafters. Something was up there! Something was on the floor too! It ran quickly between the girls’ legs and disappeared.
“Yikes!” said Molly. “There’s a ghost in here! This place is haunted!”
The girls were too scared to move. “He’ll chase us!” said Tracy. “Let’s just stand still till he goes away.”
The squealing continued. Then something began to rustle and bang.
“I’m scared,” cried Patty. “I want to get out of here!”
But when the girls began to run, they tripped over each other and fell to the floor. A loose board gave way. Before they knew it, Tracy was gone!
“Where is she?” shouted Patty.
“I wish there was a light in here!” said Mary Beth.
“Tracy!” shouted Molly. “Where are you?”
A muffled voice came from beneath them.
“I fell down here!” Tracy called.
The girls ran over to the spot where the voice came from. They discovered that the loose board was really a trapdoor in the floor. Tracy had fallen through.
The hole wasn’t deep, but it was scary. Molly and Mary Beth reached down and pulled Tracy up onto the floor again. Tracy sneezed.
“There’s hay down there!” she said. “I fell onto a pile of it!”
“That’s the good news,” said Patty. “It broke your fall. The bad news is you’re allergic to hay.”
Suddenly the door of the barn opened wide. Sunlight shone in on the girls and the stagecoach. Mary Beth shrieked as a tiny mouse ran across her foot.
“What are you girls doing?” called Lisa’s mom.
“We rode in the stagecoach,” said Mary Beth.
“We found some bones,” said Molly.
“I fell through the floor,” said Tracy.
“We thought this place was haunted. But it may have been just a mouse,” said Patty.
“I think you scared whatever ghosts or rodents there were away with your racket,” said Lisa’s mom. “There’s no one here now but us!”
The girls brushed themselves off, and Mrs. Ronning examined the bones. “This is just a pile of branches,” she said. “I think all the bones in Bone Junction are long gone!”
“So are we!” said Mary Beth, running out the door into the daylight. “Haunted or not, I’ve had enough of ghost towns for a while!”
CHAPTER 7
Trouble in the Night
On the way back to the ranch, all the Pee Wees talked at once about Bone Junction.
“I wish we lived here,” said Tim. “There are no schools in this town, not one!”
“A ghost town doesn’t need a school,” said Roger. “Ghosts don’t go to school.”
“I wouldn’t want to live here,” said Jody. “It would be lonely. I’ll bet in winter there’s no one in town.”
Molly was surprised to hear Jody say there was something he didn’t like. Jody always found something nice to say about everything. He was the only Pee Wee who did that.
As if he could read Molly’s thoughts, Jody said, “But it would probably be really pretty in winter with everything covered with snow. And we could take sleigh rides.”
That’s more like Jody, thought Molly.
When they got back to the ranch house, they were hungry. They had some chow in the dining hall, then got ready to turn in early for the night. They had done a lot in their first day. Tomorrow was the Day for Trouble, Molly reminded herself. She had to do some pretty heavy thinking about how she was going to escape square dancing. She needed a plan that would fool Mrs. Peters.
“Follow me,” said Andy to the boys. “This room in the bunkhouse is for the men. Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Moe will take the ladies next door.”
Molly hardly had time to look around the bunkhouse, she was so tired. She just brushed her teeth, climbed into her sleeping bag, and fell asleep. Mary Beth was chattering away about the ghost town and the dance tomorrow, but Molly didn’t hear a thing. She was out like a light.
Molly had a dream about Sonny tripping her on the dance floor. She sat up in bed so fast she bumped her head on the bunk above her!
Just then, there was a piercing scream in the dark. Yeeee owww! It was right outside the bunkhouse window! Every girl in the room leaped out of bed.
“What is it?” screamed Patty. “What’s out there?” The leaders got up and put on their robes. They listened carefully. Even Mrs. Peters looked scared, thought Molly.
Mrs. Baker went and looked out the window. She reached through the opening and grabbed something.
“It’s going to eat her!” screamed Tracy. “It’s a monster! We have to save her!”
The thing Mrs. Baker grabbed began to screech even more loudly. The voice sounded familiar. Mrs. Baker leaned out the window and said, “Is that you, Sonny Stone?” She shook the thing by its hair.
“Owww,” said Sonny. “Let go! Rog dared me to scare you guys. I had to do it.”
“Creep,” said Rachel in disgust.
All of a sudden a loud scream came from another direction. Sonny was in the doorway now, so it wasn’t him!
Yeeee owww! screamed something very close to the bunkhouse.
“It’s probably Roger,” said Ashley. “Let’s go back to bed.”
But Roger was at the door rescuing Sonny! It wasn’t Roger or Sonny.
“It’s a monster!” cried Mary Beth. “It’s one of those Western things, like a snake with horns or something!”
“Maybe it’s a bear!” said Molly. Her hands were shaking. “They go looking for food at night in cabins and tents.”
“Andy will save us,” said Ashley. “Where is he?”
“I’m scared!” cried Sonny, putting his head in Mrs. Baker’s lap. “It’s going to get us!”
“Baby!” said Mary Beth. “It would serve him right if it did get him!”
Then doors began to bang in the ranch house.
“It’s coming to get us!” screamed Sonny. “Get me out of here!”
He tore away from Mrs. Baker and dashed out the door.
Yeeee owww! came the monster’s noise again. And this time for sure it wasn’t Sonny.
Andy burst through the door. Ashley threw herself into his arms. “I knew you’d rescue us,” she said. Andy just laughed. “No need to panic,” he said. “It’s just a coyote. We have lots of them out here in the Wild West!”
A coyote! Molly remembered they looked like big dogs or wolves. She had seen them in movies and books, howling at the moon. This was a real honest-to-goodness one, right here at the ranch!
“They make a lot of noise,” said Chip, who had joined them. “But they don’t bother us. Lots of animals live around here, roaming the plains.”
Mrs. Peters got the girls back into their bunks and turned out lights. “Sleep tight,” she said.
But for a long time no one could. Molly lay listening to the coyote as the moonlight filtered through the window. She gave a shiver. At last she fell asleep.
When she woke up, the sun was shining, and everyone else was still sleeping. It was very quiet. The only sound was the chatter of birds. Far away, a rooster was crowing. This was different from living in a city. Living in a city meant hearing buses and cars and trolleys and people’s voices day and night. Jody was right. It was peaceful and pretty out here on the range.
Molly got up and crept to the door. She went outside and sat on a bench beside the bunkhouse. There were chipmunks looking for seeds. A small garter snake slithered by. The sun was warm and bright. This would be a nice place to live, thought Molly. Or it would be, if you didn’t have to square-dance! That was the only bad news!
One by one the sleepy Pee Wees awoke and came outside to sit with Molly.
By the time Mrs. Peters and Mrs. Baker and the cowboys came along, they had all dozed off in the sun.
“Up and at ’em!” called Andy, clapping his hands. “No time to nap in the sun! We have an old-fashioned barn dance to get ready for!”
Rat’s knees! Those were words Molly didn’t want to hear. What a way to ruin a fine day!
As they dressed and went in for breakfast, Molly tried to think how she could avoid dancing. What could possibly be her excuse? It would have to be something pretty convincing to fool Mrs. Peters. Their leader was used to the Pee Wees’ tricks. She often said, “I have to get up pretty early in the morning to stay ahead of my Pee Wees.”
Well, Molly should have gotten up a lot earlier to get ahead of Mrs. Peters! Between breakfast and dance time, there was a lot of work to do!
Molly didn’t join in the breakfast conversation. Her mind was spinning with ideas. Should she develop a stomachache? Maybe if she ate too many pancakes she would have a real one! She didn’t want to lie, and she didn’t want to be sick, but anything would be better than dancing with Sonny or Roger.
She felt her forehead, the way her mother did when she wasn’t feeling well. It was cool. No fever. Nature was not helping. She was going to have to do it alone.
She didn’t want to catch anything bad enough to be taken to the hospital.
And she didn’t want anything that needed special effects, like crutches, because she didn’t have any.
She could lose her voice, but that wouldn’t mean she couldn’t dance.
This was a tricky situation.
All of a sudden she thought of an answer. Something that was bound to work.
CHAPTER 8
Do-si-do and Around You Go
After breakfast some of the Pee Wees went horseback riding. Some of them went for a hike. And some of them gathered in the barn to help put up decorations for the big square dance. A man called Mr. Roscoe was there, showing people the dance steps. Molly sat down to watch. It wouldn’t hurt to watch. As long as she didn’t have to dance. In the first place, she didn’t know how to. In the second place, she was definitely not going to be partners with Roger or Sonny.
“There is nothing as fun as square dancing!” shouted Mr. Roscoe. “It gets your blood moving and your feet tapping. And it’s good exercise!”
A woman stood at his side. It must be Mrs. Roscoe, thought Molly. And she was right.
“My wife will help me demonstrate the steps,” Mr. Roscoe said. “First of all, square dancing is done by groups of eight people. Four boys and four girls.”
Ah, that was exactly the part Molly did not like!
“Each couple stands facing the center of an imaginary square. The dancers follow the directions of a caller. The caller shouts out the steps. I’ll be the caller at your dance this afternoon. First, I may say ‘Honor your partner.’ That means you turn toward your partner. The boy bows and the girl curtsies.”
He turned toward Mrs. Roscoe and bowed. His wife held her skirt out and curtsied.
“That’s dumb!” Molly heard a voice say at the back of the room. It sounded like Roger.
“Then I might call ‘Circle to the left,’ ” said Mr. Roscoe. “That means all eight of you join hands and move in a circle.”
Join hands! With Sonny and Roger? Rat’s knees. Molly wouldn’t.
Now Mr. Roscoe had some people get on the stage and make a square. “When the caller says ‘Do-si-do,’ you face your partner and walk forward past your partner’s right shoulder. Then you step to the right and walk backward past your partner’s left shoulder. You end up facing each other again.”
The people on the stage tried this. Some did it well, others got mixed up and ended up in the wrong position.
Now Mr. Roscoe was calling things like “Allemande left” and “Promenade home.”
Molly watched as they did the Texas star and something called the rollaway half sashay. Pretty words, but Molly didn’t want to hear any more of them. She got up and left. She headed back to the bun
khouse to think about how to escape this afternoon’s dance session. Mary Beth and Tracy were in the bunkhouse too. No one said much. Suddenly Lisa burst in and said, “It’s almost time for our lessons! We don’t want to be late!” She looked at her watch.
“Some of the boys are over there already getting pointers,” she added. “I saw Jody and Kevin going in.”
“I’ve been there already,” said Molly.
The other three girls yawned. “I’m too tired,” said Tracy.
Molly and Mary Beth nodded. They felt tired too. Tired of worrying about dancing, thought Molly.
Lisa stamped her foot. “Come on, you guys! This will be fun! I want to win the prize for the best square dancer. Don’t you?”
“I don’t know how to dance,” said Mary Beth.
“You’ll learn,” said Lisa. “That’s why we’re going over there now to practice. The big dance isn’t until tonight.”
Lisa got her square-dance skirt out of her suitcase and put it on. She twirled in a circle and it stood out all around her. With her little white boots, she looked just like a Western cowgirl, thought Molly. Molly wished she looked like that. But she didn’t. And she didn’t have a twirly skirt.
Molly decided it was time to put her plan for avoiding square dancing into practice. She ran to the closet where the cleaning supplies were stored. Inside were lots of rags used for washing windows. Nobody would notice if Molly borrowed a few. She would return them tonight.
Molly picked out the biggest, longest white rags and went into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. She wrapped the rags around her leg from her ankle to her knee. She tied the ends and tucked them under. When she looked in the mirror, her rags appeared to be a giant bandage. Just what she wanted! She would have a broken leg. Or maybe just a sprained ankle. If it was broken she couldn’t walk on it. And she had to walk. But she needed to practice limping so that it looked real. She limped around the bathroom, back and forth, until she could do it well.
She was ready to go. Surely no one would expect her to dance now! With a leg as sore as this! As Molly started for the barn, she found she had no trouble limping. Her leg really did ache. She must have tied the bandage too tight. It felt as if her leg really was sprained!