The Secret of Shadow Ranch (14 page)
Read The Secret of Shadow Ranch Online
Authors: Carolyn G. Keene
In the tack room, Dave helped Nancy pack small digging tools into a saddlebag and roll a spade in a blanket. The cowboy then saddled the girls’ horses and slung the gear aboard two of them. Mrs. Thurmond brought lunches which Dave added to a pack as Nancy called to her companions that everything was ready.
Before they mounted, Nancy suggested that they cross the big meadow. “We’ll ride up Shadow Mountain from there.”
“But it’s in the opposite direction from the cliff dwellings,” Alice whispered.
“That’s the idea,” Nancy replied. “Just in case Shorty suspects a trick and decides to follow us.”
Dave pulled out a stub of pencil and drew a map for Nancy on the back of an envelope. It showed a trail going east across the mountain to the cliff dwellings.
Twenty minutes later the girls were heading up Shadow Mountain. As they jogged along the trail, Nancy studied the map and noted that Dave’s route began not far from the cabin.
“We can go there first,” she said. “If the gang is on a wild-goose chase, now would be a good time to search for their hiding place.”
Though the girls were eager to go on with their real purpose, they spent the morning wandering over various trails. “If anyone is following us, I hope he’ll think we’re just out for pleasure and give up the chase,” Nancy remarked.
In early afternoon they stopped beside a stream to eat their lunch, then rode straight for the cabin. After half an hour, however, they were brought up short by huge boulders on the path.
“A rockfall!” George exclaimed. “We’ll have to detour.”
The riders backtracked, then crossed a steep stony slope, so treacherous that they were forced to dismount and lead their horses slowly. Finally, they reached clear trail again. It was midafternoon when Alice cried out, “There’s the cabin! I see the roof.”
The foursome rode up the slope and ground-hitched their horses. Cautiously they made their way toward the cabin. The door was open and no one was inside.
Nancy led the way behind the cabin and noticed again how close the back window was to the brush screen and rock wall.
“What a funny place to put a window!” Bess remarked.
“Yes. That’s one of the reasons I feel sure a hiding place is back here somewhere,” Nancy replied. “I think the window was used as an escape exit from the cabin.”
The girls examined the close-growing chaparral. A few feet to the side of the window, George discovered a break in the thorny brush.
Nancy slipped into it, and one by one the girls struggled through and entered a narrow cleft in the rock wall.
A few yards inside the opening Nancy pointed out horseshoe, paw, and shoe prints. “Let’s follow the prints,” she suggested. “I have a hunch this path might lead to Valentine’s hideout.”
The girls hurried to their mounts, and soon were riding through the narrow pass with only a strip of blue sky visible above them.
After a while even that was blotted out by an overhang. The path grew gloomy and wound sharply around jagged outcrops.
By the time the riders saw daylight again, the sun was low in the sky. They rode up a gentle slope and found themselves on a high plateau. Some distance ahead was a long, straight rocky parapet about twelve feet high.
Nancy reined up sharply. “Look!” she cried out. Built against the wall was a three-sided stone enclosure with an old wooden gate. Inside pranced a handsome black stallion.
“The phantom horse!” Nancy exclaimed.
As the four riders approached, the animal whinnied and reared, backing toward a crude lean-to stable.
“Maybe the trick trappings are in there,” George said.
Nancy dismounted quickly, opened a wooden gate, and slipped into the enclosure. The black steed nickered nervously and shied away, but Nancy talked soothingly to him as she walked forward.
There was a pile of hay in the corner of the stable. Nancy felt under it. In a few moments her fingers encountered something soft and she pulled out a bundle of white material. She carried it outside and closed the gate behind her.
“The phantom costumel” Bess exclaimed as Nancy shook out the filmy cloth.
“It’s Japan silk, a very thin material used for theatrical effects,” Nancy told the girls. She tucked the cloth into her saddlebag.
“This stable looks old,” Bess remarked. “I don’t think the gang built it.”
“You’re right!” Alice exclaimed, and pointed to a barely discernible heart scratched on the gate.
“Then Valentine’s hideout must be near here,” Nancy said.
As the girls looked around, Nancy noticed a huge rock jutting from the far end of the parapet. With a thrill of excitement she recognized the lookout point. “We’re on top of the cliff houses!” she exclaimed. “Let’s get the wood ready for the fire, then start searching for the treasure.”
Beyond the lookout rock the girls could see a grove of trees. They rode over and tethered their horses. The wind moaned through the fir trees and Nancy shivered. She took her sweater from the saddle horn and threw it over her shoulders. It was nearly dusk, so the girls hung flashlights on their belts.
Then they collected wood for the signal fire and carried it to the lookout rock just as the sun set. Nancy was the last to make her way off the rock. To one side of it was a short flight of worn steps going down to the top row of cliff apartments.
Nancy was about to lead the descent when they heard the howl of a coyote. She stopped short.
“What’s the matter?” asked Alice.
“Sh—listen!” Everyone froze. “I hope that’s a real coyote,” said Nancy.
Bess gasped. “You mean Shorty—”
“If the gang has discovered our ruse, they may have backtracked and traced us here,” George said.
Nancy nodded. “We’d better not turn our lights on.”
Hugging the parapet, the girls went down the steps to the narrow walk which ran in front of the apartments. To their left was a sheer drop-off.
For a moment they stood still, breathless at the height and the silence. Suddenly there came a thump from the first room.
Bess grabbed George’s arm and Alice gasped. Quietly Nancy stepped to the open doorway and peered into the gloom.
A man was lying on the floor!
CHAPTER XIX
The Cliff’s Secret
“HELP!” called a feeble voice as Nancy shone her flashlight into the dim room.
“Daddy!” cried Alice and brushed past Nancy. She threw herself beside a thin gray-haired man who was bound hand and foot.
“Uncle Ross!” exclaimed Bess and George.
The older girls swiftly untied his bonds. Crying for joy, Alice helped her father sit up and the two embraced.
After introductions, Mr. Regor explained that he had made the thumping noise by kicking his heels. “My throat was so parched I couldn’t yell out to you.”
Then Alice’s father told his story. “I’ve been a prisoner in the cabin for six months—ever since they kidnapped me at the time of the bank robbery. But this morning the gang intended to go after the Rawley treasure party, so they moved me here, where they thought I wouldn’t be discovered.”
“Why did you go to the bank the night of the robbery, Daddy?” Alice asked.
“To get some important papers I had left there. I was working at home and needed them.” He said he had interrupted the robbery, and the gang took him along to keep him from identifying them.
“They’re Westerners,” he went on, “and have used this cabin hideout before. The idea was to stay here for a cooling-off period.”
“How many are in the gang?” Nancy asked.
“Three. At first Shorty and Sid Brice stayed in the cabin with me while Al Diamond lived in Tumbleweed and brought us supplies.”
“Who’s Sid Brice, Uncle Ross?” Bess asked.
“The gray-haired fellow who looks like me.”
“He calls himself Bursey,” Nancy told him.
“I know,” said Mr. Regor. “One day A1 Diamond came to the cabin all excited. He’d talked to an Indian girl named Mary Deer and learned all about Valentine’s treasure. So Diamond decided that the gang should go after it and sent Shorty to get a job on the ranch. He was supposed to spread the phantom-horse story and drive the Rawleys off.”
Nancy looked troubled. “Mr. Regor, what happened to the bank loot?”
“It was hidden in the cabin until Shorty reported that you girls had spotted the place.
“The next day Diamond and Brice moved the money to the ghost town and made me go along. They had just finished hiding the loot in the old hotel when we heard your horses approaching. Brice hustled me down the hill. All I could do was drop one of my crayons and hope somebody would find it.”
“Oh, we did, Daddy!” exclaimed Alice.
Mr. Regor said Diamond had remained in the ghost town to spy on the girls. “Later he told us he had caused a rockslide.”
Nancy mentioned finding the coffee cups on the table in the cabin.
“Yes. We heard your horses clattering up the slope, so Brice forced me out the window in back and into the little rocky passage. He had the dog on a rope and made him go too. But later he broke loose.”
“We found one of your pictures on the table, Uncle Ross,” said George.
The man smiled. “I’ve been drawing pictures to keep myself busy. Brice has been selling them and keeping the money for himself,” he added.
“Those terrible men! Have they mistreated you, Daddy?”
The bank president said he had not been hurt, but had been underfed and was weak. “I once heard Brice say there was time enough to get rid of me when they left Shadow Mountain.”
While Alice told her father all that had happened so far, Nancy, Bess, and George flashed their lights about Mr. Regor’s prison.
The floor was littered with pieces of broken pottery and rock. Beside the door Nancy noticed a flat-topped boulder. “The Indians probably used it for a table, or a seat,” she thought. Nearby was a large rectangular chunk of stone.
The three girls switched off their lights and stepped outside. With Nancy in the lead, the three friends walked close to the wall of the cliff dwellings. They searched one apartment after another for the treasure, but always found the same thing: shards and crumbled rocks.
As the girls emerged from one of the middle rooms, Nancy noticed a crude wooden ladder resting against the wall and leading to the roof.
“It’s just an old ladder—probably put there by the cliff dwellers,” said Bess.
Nancy did not agree. “There are nails in this. Perhaps Valentine brought it here. I’d like to climb up.”
“Let’s finish searching the rooms,” George said.
“Okay.”
As they neared the end of the row, the young sleuth exclaimed, “Look!” The last doorway was neatly blocked with an enormous stone.
“Valentine’s hideout!” exclaimed George. “He must have put that rock there to keep intruders out!”
“But how did he get in?” Bess asked, puzzled. “The stone’s too big to be moved much on this little ledge.”
“I know!” exclaimed Nancy. “Come on!” She hastened back to the ladder. Swiftly she attached her flashlight to her belt and slipped her arms into her sweater.
By the time Bess and George caught up to Nancy, she had begun to climb. Breathlessly they watched her as she cautiously tested each rung. One splintered before she finally reached the roof.
“Nancy, be careful!” Bess cried fearfully.
Shading her flashlight, Nancy moved toward the end chamber and found a column of ancient footholds to the plateau above.
“Probably there’s another set like them on the other side,” she reasoned. “The ladder was Valentine’s extra escape route.”
Playing her flashlight over the surface, Nancy walked a dozen steps toward the end of the roof. Suddenly she spotted a large hole.
Shining her light into it, Nancy saw a pile of broken rock directly below. She gripped the sides of the opening and lowered herself into the chamber.
“O-oo, it’s musty in here!”
In one corner lay a moldering blanket and saddle. Nearby was a pickax. On the wall above these Nancy found an indistinct carved letter. She brushed away the dust.
V—for Valentine
!
!
Nancy’s pulse pounded with joy and excitement.
But where was the treasure? “It can’t be buried,” she thought. “The floor is solid stone.”
When Nancy lifted the blanket, it fell into shreds at her touch. There was nothing beneath it. Her eyes fell upon a large pottery vase in the corner. The vessel was nearly three feet high and had a wide mouth. Nancy beamed her light into it.
Standing on end and level with the top of the vase was a metal box!
“This might be it!” Nancy exulted. She put down her flashlight, reached in, and lifted out the heavy box. It slipped from her grasp and hit the floor, jolting off a rusted padlock.
Nancy pulled open the lid. Before her lay hundreds of small shining gold hearts!
“Oh!”
Beneath the layer of gold pieces lay stacks of United States bank notes and a chamois bag. It contained an assortment of precious jewels!
“It can’t be real!” Nancy said aloud. “I’m dreaming!”
But Nancy’s mind clicked back to reality. “I can’t get this chest back through the ceiling, that’s for sure.” She eyed the pickax. “Maybe I can pry the rock away from the door.”
Nancy worked the point of the pickax beneath the rock. She pulled hard. The slab moved a trifle! She tried again. This time the rock moved about a foot. Nancy pushed the treasure box through the opening, turned off her flashlight, and squeezed outside.
“George! Bess!” The girls came running and Nancy told of her find. “Take the treasure back to Alice and Mr. Regor,” she directed. “I’ll light the signal fire.”
Cautiously Nancy crawled out onto the jutting rock and took a packet of matches from her pocket. She struck one, shielding it from the wind, and held it to the kindling.
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