A week after the arrival of Peyton’s letter, suggesting that his sister remain longer, another came with quite a different request. In it the lad assured them all of his great faith in his new overseer.
“Trujillo seems to have complete control of his helpers. In fact, at times, I think that they treat him reverentially, which, of course I cannot understand, but I am now confident that there will be no uprising among the peons and so Babsie I do hope that Virginia and your other girl friends will come to Three Cross and make you as long a visit as you have made them, longer indeed, if they can be spared.”
“Oh, Virg, will you go, you and Betsy and Megsy? I’d so love to have you all with me when I open up that old house. You know Peyton has been living in one of the small adobes, not wishing to open up the big place until I came. Virg, you’ve been there time and again. I remember how Mrs. Dartley called you her ‘Angel of Mercy.’”
“As everyone else does on the desert or anywhere,” Margaret put in.
Virg laughed. “And all because I rode over to Three Cross one day and applied first aid measures when the Dartley baby was cutting teeth.”
“What did you do?” Betsy inquired.
“Rubbed the poor little gums with a sterilized thimble till the wee teeth poked through,” Virginia replied.
Barbara was eager to be away and so the very next morning, while it was still cool, they rode to the North, promising Malcolm to return in a fortnight.
Peyton, expecting them, had ridden a few miles southward to meet them and joyous was the reunion between the brother and sister, but it was at Virginia’s side that the lad was soon riding.
The old ranch house which they were approaching (and which Mr. Wente had purchased from the Dartleys), was one of the most picturesque on the desert. It was a large Spanish adobe built around an inner court over which were hanging balconies. The windows were barred; wide verandas surrounded it on all sides, and each room had a door opening thereon. A clump of cottonwood trees grew around a water-hole in the door-yard. The house was very old and in some places the adobe walls were crumbling.
Mr. Dartley had been too poor to repair it, and Peyton, since he had acquired it, had been too much occupied with the cattle he had purchased to attend to renovating the house.
“What a wonderful old place it is,” Virginia said as she smiled at the lad.
“It looks wonderful to me,” he replied, “because I keep hoping that someday it will be your home as well as mine.”
Before the girl could reply, Babs galloped up alongside. “Oh Virg,” she said with sparkling eyes. “I just know I’m going to love this old place. If only there were blossoming vines climbing over the veranda, wouldn’t it be beautiful?”
It was hard for the maiden addressed to think of vines just then, but she smilingly replied, “Yes, dear, I am sure they would. Your well is never dry and anything will grow on the desert if it is well watered.”
“Oh Virg, are you making a pun?” Betsy Clossen called as she and Margaret rode up within hearing.
Virginia laughed as she gaily replied, “Maybe I am. I don’t feel accountable just at this particular moment.”
Peyton glanced at the flushed pretty face of the speaker and wondered why Virginia seemed confused but he did not have another moment alone with her for they were entering the door-yard where a cowboy, apparently a Mexican of the better class, advanced to take their ponies.
“Who is your new acquisition, brother?” Barbara asked as she gazed with interest at the graceful Mexican lad, who, having made almost courtly salutations to the young ladies, had, without speaking, turned and led the horses toward the corral.
Peyton remonstrated. “Don’t you know enough about the ways of the desert, little sister, not to ask who anyone is? I really am as ignorant concerning the past of my faithful head rider Trujillo as you are. He blew in one day last March—literally blew in! We were having one of those terrible hurricanes which frequently visit us in the spring. For the first time since I had acquired ‘The Three Cross Ranch’ I was desperately dismal. The only capable cowboy I had, departed to become overseer elsewhere, and I was left with the shiftless Mexican peons who knowing my ignorance, took advantage of it. Then, as though that were not trouble enough, a blinding sandstorm came, and I feared my newly acquired herd would be driven by it over into Mexico. It was in the midst of all this that I heard a pounding on the front door. Opening it, I let in a whirl of wind and sand and also this Mexican lad, Trujillo.
“I was desperate for companionship just then, and, although he did not speak English, he could understand my Spanish and I told him my woes. When the tale was finished, the sandstorm had passed. Silently the stranger arose. I believed that he was leaving without a word of gratitude for the refreshment I had given him. I watched him mount his weary horse and ride down to the bunk house. He called to the peons and they gathered about him. I saw them bring him a fresh mount and then they all rode away with him toward the South. I thought dismally that perhaps he had come to take them away from me, but, toward evening I heard them all returning. They had rounded up my frightened, scattering herd, and, before dark, the cattle were safe in the five-acre enclosure. Then the stranger came to say adios, but I persuaded him to remain until morning and he is still here.”
“I believe there is a mystery about your Trujillo,” Betsy Clossen said. “Wouldn’t it be interesting if we could find out what it is?”
The other girls laughed.
“Betsy is always on a still hunt for a mystery,” Babs told her brother, as they walked toward the house. “We call her Detective Betsy in school, but, as yet, she has never discovered one worth the effort to unravel. School girls are not mysterious.”
“Personally, I think one might find a mystery in this old house,” Margaret said. “If walls had tongues as well as ears what interesting stories it could tell.”
Peyton led the way within, and the young people, standing in the long living room which extended across the entire front of the house, uttered varying exclamations of delight.
“It’s just the sort of a room one sees on the screen when the home of a Spanish Don is being pictured, isn’t it?” Margaret said. “The original owners were Spanish, were they not?”
“Yes,” Peyton replied, “Don Carlos Spinoza was a wealthy Spaniard, who became a political outlaw during one of the frequent uprisings in Mexico City. He remained in hiding with his family in the mountains near here for some time and finally built this house. This interesting old furniture belonged to him. Later, when his friends were in power, he returned and rescued the family paintings and other treasures from their home in Mexico. However, after a year or two of isolation the Donna and their beautiful daughter became discontented and yearned once more for the gay life to which they had been accustomed. Don Carlos had many political enemies in Mexico, and so he had no desire to return. At last he sold this place for a small sum to Mr. Dartley and left for Spain.”
“Mrs. Dartley did not appreciate this mahogany furniture,” Virginia told them. “She often said she wished that she could make a bonfire of it all and buy some nice, new chairs that didn’t have carvings to catch the dust.”
“But she could not because the old furniture and family paintings were only left here temporarily, or so the story goes, but years have passed and no one has returned to claim them.”
Virginia smiled. “Poor Mrs. Dartley looked strangely out of place in the midst of all this grandeur. She was a dear and ever so kind hearted, but I often thought that the Dons and Donnas looking down from the walls must have wondered what had happened and how they chanced to be living with folk who dressed in gingham instead of silk. But they didn’t see her often, for this room was usually left in darkened solitude, for the Dartley family lived almost entirely in the kitchen.”
Suddenly Barbara inquired: “Betsy, why are you staring so hard at the painting of that grand old Donna? Does the picture fascinate you?”
Betsy laughed at them over her shoulder. “You know I have an active imagination,” she replied, “and so you will not be surprised to hear me say that I believe I have met this fine lady somewhere.”
“That would be impossible, my dear girl,” Margaret protested, “for that Donna could not possibly be living now.”
“I do believe that the lovely dark-eyed Senorita in this picture is her daughter,” Virginia said, “and here she is again older and with a little girl standing by her side and a beautiful dark-eyed baby boy on her lap. It really is too bad that the descendants of the Spinoza family cannot have these paintings in their gallery wherever they are. In Spain, I suppose, as they have never been heard from since they departed so long ago.”
“Girls,” Babs said, “it is growing dusky in here, which reminds me that the sun will soon set and that the beds are not made and that I, for one, am ravenously hungry.”
“Lead us to your culinary department, Peyton, and we will spread out our picnic lunch. Good, here comes the cowboy, Trujillo. Now Betsy, you begin solving the mystery, but don’t let the poor lad know that you are trying to unravel him,” Virginia cautioned, as they entered the more modern kitchen which, since it faced toward the west, was bright with the late afternoon sunshine. At one end was the great black range, which had been the pride of the good housekeeper, who so recently lived there.
Across the other end was the long dining table and near the windows were plain wooden rockers which Mrs. Dartley had made comfortable with soft cushioned seats, covered with bright colored materials, for this had been the home part of the house for her little family.
The solemn grandeur of the other rooms had depressed the rancher’s wife and she once confided to Virginia that the life-sized portraits hanging around the walls gave her the shivers. “Those painted folks all have beady black eyes and they watch every move I make,” she had said. “It doesn’t matter which part of the room I walk to, their eyes turn and keep a spyin’ at me. It’s too spooky a place to live in. I don’t step a foot in that room, month in and month out, if I can help myself.”
It was partly because of this uncanny closed room that Mrs. Dartley had been so eager to have her husband sell the Three Cross Ranch that she might return to the Middle-West and to the farmer folk whose pleasant houses were all furnished in the simple way that she liked.
During the evening meal, Peyton asked many questions of the girls concerning their year at school. Margaret, Virginia and Babs chattered of one thing and another. Suddenly Virg, wondered why the usually loquacious Betsy Clossen was keeping so still. She looked across the table and saw that the would-be young detective seemed to be deep in thought. Now and then she would glance at the Mexican cowboy who sat opposite. Since he did not understand the English language, the girls did not attempt to converse with him, although Peyton frequently addressed Trujillo in Spanish.
Virg smiled to herself, for she guessed, and rightly, that Betsy was trying to imagine a mystery about the really good-looking, dark young stranger—that she might solve it.