Mystery in Arizona Page 8

  Trixie knew that although the desert at first glance seemed to be as flat as a pancake, it was actually pocketed with hollows in between rises where an utterly exhausted child could lie unseen until it was too late. There were all sorts of knolls and mounds and clumps of shrubby mesquite out on that vast expanse which could hide an unconscious child from the view of the searchers even though they might gallop back and forth within a few feet of him. And if by some chance his short fat legs managed to carry him into the foothills of the mountains …

  Trixie shivered and dismissed the thought. Petey probably would start off along the driveway or he might decide to follow one of the trails, and in either case he would be picked up by someone employed at the ranch before he got far. But suppose he didn’t? Suppose he set off across the desert at that hour in the afternoon when darkness seemed to descend so suddenly?

  She quickly made up her mind; the risk was too great. Aloud she blurted, “Maria, did you know that Petey is talking about running away to join his grandfather and the others?”

  Maria, midway between stove and sink, dropped the heavy iron skillet she was carrying. It was empty but it fell onto the tiled floor with a dull thud. The thud, Trixie felt sure, drowned out Maria’s exclamation of surprise and horror. Her mouth was formed into an O as she stooped quickly to grasp the handle of the frying pan.

  “Pay no attention to Petey,” she said over one shoulder. “He is just a little boy who makes up stories to amuse himself when he is bored—on a day such as this when I had to keep him home from school because of a cold.”

  Quickly she changed the subject. “Diana has not yet told you all of the good news. You are all going to La Posada this evening. The patrón—Mr. Wilson has arranged it. Most of the guests had previously made plans to dine in the city this evening anyway. Only three will stay here. I am to fix a cold supper for them and Rosita will serve it in Mr. Wilson’s apartment.”

  “Oh,” Di said in dismay, “that means Uncle Monty and Rosita can’t go to the festival. I think those three guests are mean. Who are they, anyway?”

  Maria smiled. “I think you can guess, Diana.”

  “Our three pets!” Honey exclaimed. “Well, I’m just going to tell Mrs. Sherman that she has to go. I’ll tell her that we can’t go unless she is willing to come along as our chaperon.”

  “That’s a thought,” Trixie said. “I’ll tell Calammy the same thing. How about Mr. X, Di? Do you think you can persuade him to go?”

  “Oh, yes,” Di replied. “He really is a lamb. While I was tidying his room I told him about how we Bob-Whites had taken the Orlandos’ place and he thought that was just wonderful. We got very chummy and then he told me why he had been so awfully blue. He has two sons and a daughter who are all in their teens and are at boarding schools in the East. At Thanksgiving time he asked them if they wouldn’t like to spend the Christmas holidays at an Arizona ranch and they said they would. Then at the very last minute they changed their minds. The girl’s roommate is giving a house party and that’s where they’re all going.

  “Mr. Wellington was so depressed at the thought of staying alone in his big house at this time of year, that he closed it up as soon as they told him the change in their plans and came here. He had reserved one of the large cabins for the kids and it’s still in his name because he’s sort of hoping that maybe they’ll change their minds again and join him here after all.”

  “Oh, I hope they do,” Honey cried out sympathetically. “It was very selfish of them to disappoint him like that at the last minute. Try to persuade him to come with us tonight, Di, and let’s all make sure that he has a wonderful time.”

  Di nodded. “If ever a man needs to be around a bunch of teen-agers, he is the one. Let’s adopt him for the duration.”

  Jim and Brian came into the kitchen then, and Jim asked, “Adopt whom?”

  Di explained while they stacked dishes on the trays.

  “I’m in favor of adopting him,” Jim agreed. “He’s a nice guy. You know him, Brian, and so do you, Mart, although you may not know his name. He’s the sort of plump, middle-aged man with thin gray hair and nice brown eyes. He didn’t eat any breakfast this morning, remember? You must!”

  “I remember him,” Mart said with a grin. “He absentmindedly put about ten lumps of sugar in his coffee and then left the table without even sipping it. He did, however, give me a dollar tip. I didn’t know his real name; I call him Bonanza.”

  “Tips!” Trixie fairly shouted. “That’s another thing that’s unfair about this setup. You boys are going to get tips for waiting on the tables and we poor girls won’t get a single cent.”

  “Calm down,” Jim said quietly. “If you could read you’d see the sign in the dining-room that says NO TIPPING ALLOWED. So Mart had better return that dollar pronto.”

  Mart snorted. “And hurt the poor guy’s feelings?

  Not me.”

  “Obey orders, sonny boy,” Brian told him sternly.

  Just then Petey came into the kitchen and Maria introduced him to the Bob-Whites. Then she said, “You didn’t wash your hands, darling. You can’t have anything to eat until you do.”

  “Don’t wanna eat any of your silly ole stuff,” he retorted sulkily.

  “Oh, yes, you do,” Maria said patiently. “You’ll love this rice dish. Just think! The boys fixed it.”

  Petey’s eyes wandered from Mart’s face to Brian’s and then to Jim’s. “I don’ b’lieve it,” he mumbled.

  “But it’s true,” Jim said, grinning. “We can’t cook as well as your mother does, of course, but won’t you please taste the rice and let us know what you think of it?”

  Weakening, Petey let Jim lead him toward the table, but he wriggled free when Jim tried to lift him up onto the kitchen stool.

  “No,” he yelled and raced over to clasp his mother’s skirts. “I don’t wanna eat that rice stuff. If you’d let me go with my granddaddy I’d be eating skeletons now.” His outraged yell became a scream. “I—”

  But Maria had gently covered his mouth with her hand and was hurrying him out of the kitchen. The door closed behind them with a sharp click.

  The Bob-Whites stared at one another in wide-eyed amazement.

  “Do my old ears deceive me?” Mart finally asked. “Did that infant say something about eating skeletons?”

  “You heard correctly,” Trixie replied. “You should have heard what he told me before lunch. His one idea is to join his grandfather in a cavelike place where there are all sorts of animals including a gigantic ape and a green-faced man with big red eyes and horns.”

  “Apes and green-faced monsters!” Mart gasped. “Wow! If he thinks up those things in broad daylight I’d hate to hear about one of his nightmares!”

  “You’re kidding of course,” said Jim to Trixie.

  “Or exaggerating like anything as usual,” Brian added.

  “Oh, tell us the truth, Trixie,” Honey begged. “What did Petey tell you?”

  Trixie slowly and carefully repeated as much of the conversation as she could remember. “And,” she finished, “I don’t think he imagines all of those things. They’re there, or something almost as horrible, wherever the Orlandos have gone!”

  Chapter 11

  More Mysteries

  “Don’t be silly, Trix,” Brian said briskly. “The kid is simply letting his imagination run away with him as you so often do.”

  Trixie shrugged. “Well, I think something mysterious is going on but I can’t stand around here arguing. I’ve got to do some math so I can go riding this afternoon.”

  She hurried off to the room she shared with Honey. But she had hardly time to finish the first problem when it was one-thirty and she had to return to the kitchen to help the girls wash the luncheon dishes.

  “How did you make out?” Honey asked.

  Trixie moaned. “Jim has given me ten absolutely impossible problems. They’re all mixed up with fractions and decimals and yards and miles and square feet with a few gal
lons and ounces thrown in.”

  Di giggled. “All of them couldn’t be in one problem.”

  “But they are,” Trixie told her. “Which means that I’ll never finish them in time to go riding with you at two-thirty.”

  “Oh, Trixie,” Honey wailed. “That’s not fair. I won’t go if you can’t.”

  “Neither will I,” said Di loyally. “Never mind about these dishes, Trix. I’ll do your share. Go back and study like anything.”

  Trixie frowned. “No, that’s not fair, either. It isn’t your fault that I got such low marks.”

  Honey gave her a little push toward the door. “Don’t argue. We want to do your share so you can go riding so we can go riding.”

  Trixie laughed and raced off. But back in her room once more, she couldn’t seem to concentrate. Her thoughts ran like this:

  How many quarts in a gallon? … Where did the Orlandos go and why? … There are 5,280 feet in a mile, but are they square feet? … What could Petey have meant when he said he would be eating skeletons now? … The fraction two-thirds equals sixty-six and two-thirds per cent, or is it sixteen and two-thirds per cent? …

  Suddenly she heard low voices outside her open window. She recognized one of the speakers immediately. It was Rosita, who was saying, “I can’t go back. You must see that now. It was my fault that he lost the use of his hands. I’ll never forgive myself. Never.”

  “Now, now,” a man said tenderly. “There’s no sense in crying about it. Besides, it wasn’t really your fault. You mustn’t let an accident ruin your whole life. How much money do you need?”

  “It will cost five hundred dollars to make him whole again,” Rosita replied. “If only he had gone to a real doctor right away instead of to the medicine man!”

  “That’s all water over the dam,” the man said quietly but rather sternly. “No use crying about it now. But five hundred dollars—wow! If I had that much myself I wouldn’t be here.”

  “I know,” Rosita said softly. “You and I are in what you might say is the same boat. But I am lucky. I have been here only one day and I already have one of the five hundred dollars I need.”

  “You have?” The man sounded amazed. “How on earth—”

  “It is something I do not like to talk about,” interrupted Rosita. “It was something which had to be done quickly so that the doctor would begin treatments right away.” Her voice rose. “Don’t look at me like that. I did nothing wrong, I tell you. I did not steal the money nor did I cheat anyone.”

  Trixie heard footsteps running across the flagstone floor of the patio then. Ashamed of herself for eavesdropping, even unintentionally, Trixie tried not to look out of the window. But her eyes refused to stay glued to the problem she was working on. And then she caught a glimpse of the man Rosita had been talking to, as he strode off down the path that led to the bunkhouse.

  It was Tenny the cowboy; she was sure of it. But what had happened to his speech? Last night he had spoken in typical cowboy lingo; today he talked without a trace of it.

  What had Rosita meant when she said, “You and I are in what you might say is the same boat?” And why had Tenny implied that if he had five hundred dollars he wouldn’t be working at the ranch?

  What was the accident which might ruin Rosita’s whole life because she blamed herself for it? Who had lost the use of his hands? What place was she talking about when she said, “I can’t go back”?

  Where had she got the one hundred dollars which had obviously aroused the cowboy’s suspicions?

  Trixie knew from her research on the subject that white men had cheated the Indians in all of their treaties and had literally stolen their land from them. Perhaps, then, an Indian would not think it was dishonest to steal from white people.

  Had Rosita stolen money from the guests? It would have been so easy for her, while tidying the cabins on Monday, to slip into her apron pocket any money she found lying around: small amounts which would not be missed but which would total a hundred dollars!

  Trixie dismissed the ugly thought from her mind. “Speaking of totals,” she scolded herself, “you’d better get back to your problems.”

  But now she couldn’t concentrate at all. Who cared about fractions, decimals, weights, and measures? The real problem was this:

  Were Rosita and Tenny somehow tied up in the mystery of the Orlandos’ sudden departure? Was Calamity Jane Brown, who had spent the night before weeping out on the patio for no apparent reason, involved, too?

  And what had Petey meant when he spoke of eating skeletons? The boys thought that he had simply been letting his imagination run away with him. But Trixie felt differently. Perhaps he had exaggerated a little, but where there was smoke there was bound to be fire. Wherever his grandparents, uncles, and aunts had gone was certainly a mysterious place.

  What could Petey have been talking about when he spoke of an enormous ape that was all ready to jump down on him and “eat him all up”? If he had been exaggerating a great deal, the ape might have been a pet monkey in a cage that hung from the ceiling in the place that was “all dark and shadowy in the corners ’cause it’s not lighted ’cept with candles.” Was that scary place a cellar?

  And what about “that great big ole green man wif the big red eyes and the horns”? And who were the “horrible peoples” that were “mostly sort of animals”? Trixie did not believe in hobgoblins or ghosts but she knew that children of Petey’s age often had wild dreams about them.

  Trixie was convinced that Petey had not been talking about a nightmare. Even though he had probably been letting his imagination run away with him, he had definitely been describing the place where he had gone last year and where his grandparents had gone again this year.

  The door opened then and Trixie jumped. It was Honey, who said, “Heavens! You act as though you expected a ghost instead of me. I do hope you’ve finished those assignments, Trix. Jim says you can’t go riding until he’s checked them.”

  Trixie groaned. “There’s nothing to correct. I just couldn’t concentrate, Honey.”

  Before she could repeat the strange conversation she had heard, someone else came to the door.

  Honey shook her head. “That’s probably Jim now and he’s going to be wild when he sees that you haven’t even started on those math assignments.”

  It was Jim and he was wild when he saw that Trixie had accomplished so little. Controlling his redheaded temper with an obvious effort, he said evenly, “Well, that does it. You can’t go for a ride this afternoon and go to La Posada this evening, too. Take your choice.”

  Trixie glared at him. “I’ll get these silly old problems done so I can ride with the second group at three-thirty. And, in case you’re interested, smarty, I’ll go to La Posada, too.”

  Jim’s eyes were very green. “In case you’re interested, not-so-smarty, I’m going riding now and I won’t be back until three-thirty. You’re not going to leave the ranch house until every one of those problems is one hundred per cent correct.”

  “Leave percentages out of our normal conversation, puh-leeze,” Trixie begged him, tossing her blond curls. “If you’d make up problems that made sense I could get the right answers.”

  Brian appeared then behind Jim’s broad shoulders. “Nobody made up those problems,” he said firmly. “At least Jim and I didn’t. They were copied out of the math book you were supposed to study last month. If you were at all familiar with said book you would have recognized the problems.”

  Jim stepped aside and Brian strode into the small room. “And how about your theme on the Navahos? Any progress to report? I gather that Di and Honey did your dish-washing for you so you could bone. Just what have you accomplished?”

  Trixie collapsed on the lower bunk, utterly deflated. “Oh, go away, slave-drivers,” she moaned. “Forget that I ever wanted to ride. I’ll spend the afternoon studying. I’ll spend the night studying, too. That’s why I came out here to Arizona: just to study all the livelong time. Or didn’t you know that?”<
br />
  Jim, grinning now, reached out and pulled her to her feet. “Listen, Trix, we don’t like to pick on you, but we promised your parents that we’d tutor you. If you’d just concentrate on your assignments instead of trying to solve mysteries that are purely figments of your imagination!”

  Di burst in then from her own room. “It’s all settled. Mr. X. W. is going with us tonight. He can hardly wait. I told him that we had decided to adopt him and—why, what’s the matter, Trixie? Have you been crying?”

  Instead of replying, Trixie cried out, “Oh, gosh! I forgot that I was supposed to talk my Calammy into going to La Posada, too. Did you have any luck with Mrs. Sherman, Honey?”

  Honey shook her head. “There wasn’t time. Speaking of which, we’d all better get down to the corral fast or they’ll go off without us.” She gave Trixie a quick hug. “I’d stay with you but I know you wouldn’t be able to do any work with me hanging around.”

  After they had all gone, Trixie sat down again at the small desk and this time she did concentrate. By three o’clock she had finished the problems and was fairly sure that the answers were correct. So she started on her Navaho theme, but the very word reminded her of Rosita and her thoughts began to wander again.

  Maybe a dip in the pool will clear my brain, she thought, and donned her bathing suit. Jim and Honey are right. If I’m going to have any fun at this ranch I’d better stop worrying about other people’s problems and concentrate on my own.

  But deep down inside she knew that she would never have any real fun until she had solved some of the mysteries—or at least what seemed like mysteries to her.

  Chapter 12

  “Madhouse!”

  The pool, like everything else in Arizona, was enormous, and the water in it seemed to reflect the bright blue of the cloudless sky. Around the edge of it were groups of chairs and tables which were painted in colors to match those in a desert sunset, and everything gleamed in the dazzling sunlight.