CHAPTER XVII
WHERE BETSY WAS HIDING
But the searchers were soon convinced that Betsy was not hiding to tease. Peyton lighted all of the heavy brass hanging lamps but they did little to illumine the long, dark room. Indeed, their dim light made the corners darker and more ghostly than they had been before. Each girl was carrying a lantern and the room was searched more thoroughly than it had been by Virginia alone.
“Perhaps Betsy climbed out of a window and is hiding out doors,” Babs suggested.
“That would be an impossible feat,” Peyton replied, “for, in common with all Spanish houses, these windows are barred.”
As he spoke the lad turned and walked toward the fireplace. He looked into its cavernous opening and carefully examined the walls and chimney. Turning back into the room, Peyton met Virginia and they exchanged discouraged glances. “I simply cannot understand it,” the boy said in a low tone.
Before Virginia could reply, a startled cry rang out. They both whirled, expecting to see Betsy, but instead it was Babs who was gazing at one of the barred windows as though she had seen the ghost about which she had been talking.
Peyton leaped to her side. “Barbara,” he said, “why are you staring at the window in that wild way? I can see nothing.”
“No, you can’t now,” the girl replied. “It is gone—the face—”
“I believe that mischievous Betsy Clossen is outside peering in at us and laughing to think how she is fooling us all,” Virginia said in almost a natural tone. “I know her of old. She loves to tease.”
But Babs shook her head as she continued to gaze at the barred window.
“It wasn’t Betsy,” she whispered. “It was a dark face. I think Trujillo.”
“Girls, you come back to the kitchen,” Peyton said, “and bar the door after me. I am going to see if Betsy Clossen is really hiding outside. If she is the kind of a girl who would cause you all this concern just to play a prank, I think you would better send her back East when she is found.”
“I, too, thought at first that she was hiding to tease,” Margaret said, “but Betsy really has good common-sense and she would not continue to frighten us in this way. Now, I am sure that something has happened to her.”
Peyton was much more troubled than he wished the girls to know. It was his house and they were his guests, and his sister’s. Too, he had been quietly watching his new Mexican overseer for the past few weeks, as some of his actions seemed very strange.
Then Peyton left the kitchen.
“Oh, how I do wish this mystery was solved,” Margaret declared as she sank down in a rocker, her eyes watching the closed door leading into the front room, but almost instantly she was on her feet again clutching Virginia’s arm.
“Look! Quick!” she whispered. “Didn’t the door open a crack?”
Virginia laughed. “No, no, child,” she replied. “Don’t let your imagination run riot. I am sure there is some perfectly natural commonplace reason for Betsy’s disappearance. You girls know perfectly well that there is no such thing as a ghost. You hear stories about them but you never met a single person who ever saw one.”
Then they were silent, just waiting, they knew not for what.
In the meantime Peyton had gone down to the bunk-house.
The lad knew that the girl could not have left the room by any of the exits known to him. The front door had been heavily barricaded by the Spanish Don on the inside and as Peyton did not use that room, he had not opened the massive wooden doors. The windows were barred and the only door of which he had knowledge was the one leading into the kitchen. Suddenly he recalled that there was another door but he had found it locked, with no key in evidence, and believing it led into a store room of some kind, he had thought little of it.
When Babs had cried out that she had seen a face peering in at one of the barred windows, a dark face that looked like Trujillo’s, Peyton had determined to go at once to the bunk-house and find out the whereabouts of his head rider.
There was a very long adobe building in which the ten peons lived together. Not far from it was one small solitary adobe which had been built for the overseer of the Three Cross Ranch. It was in this that Trujillo slept, although he took his meals with Peyton at the big house. The owner of the ranch felt that this was a courtesy due his head rider, and, moreover Trujillo had served him well by saving his cattle on the day of his first appearance in the wild March blizzard.
As he thought of these things, he rebuked himself for having doubted the loyalty of his Mexican cowboy in whom he had so much faith that he had placed him in charge of the entire ranch, and yet, try as he might to banish it, he could not but agree with Betsy that there was something very mysterious about Trujillo.
The long adobe was lighted and the Mexicans squatting on the floor were intent on a game which they played every evening.
Peyton quietly passed the open door and did not attract their attention. He went at once to the overseer’s adobe dwelling. It was dark. The door was standing open and in the faint light of the rising moon, Peyton could see that the single room was unoccupied.
“Trujillo,” he said softly, but there was no response.
Peyton, troubled indeed, turned back toward the ranch house. He did not inquire of the peons the whereabouts of Trujillo, for the overseer never associated with his helpers although he treated them kindly.
What should he do? What could he do? The lad was thinking as he again ascended the steps and entered the kitchen door. It was then that he heard a crash followed by a shrill cry in the front room.
Instantly the girls were on their feet and they were all staring at the closed door when it burst open and Betsy Clossen rushed in. Her face was very pale and she was so excited that at first she could not speak.
“Betsy, is it really you?” Barbara exclaimed joyfully as she caught her friend in her arms.
“I’m not sure certain it is, myself,” Betsy replied as she sank down in a rocker. “I’ve had the most exciting experience.”
The others gathered about her. “Do tell us just what happened,” Virginia said.
“Well, when you left me standing alone in the dark room, I happened to take a step backward and that caused me to sit down very suddenly in a big mahogany chair. I caught at the arms and I must have pushed a button that was part of the carving. Instantly I realized that I was slowly sinking, although it was so dark I could not tell just what was happening. The floor seemed to have opened under me and very quietly and easily the chair was descending like an elevator. At last I was convinced that I had been let down through a trap-door. I could hear it closing above me. I found myself in a dark room. I didn’t dare leave the chair, however, so there I sat, shouting lustily for help, but I could not make you hear. I must have been there an hour when I decided that I would experiment with the chair. I thought that if by pushing one knob I had caused it to descend into the cellar-like room, there must be another knob that would lift it again. At last I found such a contrivance, pushed it and slowly the chair ascended. I gave a cry of joy when I was once more in the front room, I sprang from the chair, knocking over a small table which fell with a crash and here I am. Now that it’s all over, I am glad that it happened. What an exciting experience it will be to tell Cousin Bob.”
“And so you see, girls, the mysterious Trujillo had nothing to do with it,” Virginia said.
Peyton, however, remembering the unoccupied bunk-house of the overseer was still troubled, but a moment later his fears concerning the loyalty of his cowboy were set at rest. The galloping of a horse’s feet was heard and then a hallooing. Peyton swung open the door and Trujillo stood there.
Rapidly in Spanish he told the other lad that one of the peons had reported early in the evening that a yearling had fallen into a water-hole and that together they had departed to endeavor to rescue it. Luckily there was but little water in the hole and the young cow, though greatly frightened, was unhurt and they had brought it back to keep for a few days in the hospital corral.
This was all so commonplace that it restored the girls to a more normal state of mind and Peyton rebuked himself for having doubted his head rider who was ever serving him so faithfully.
“Now, let’s go to bed, girls, and forget all that has happened. We are quite used to elevators and since we know that the Don, who built this house, needed some way to hide quickly from his pursuers, we can easily understand his descending chair. Tomorrow I intend to take a ride in it.”
Virginia’s matter of fact tone calmed the younger and more nervous girls and soon they retired.
The recent owners of the Three Cross Ranch had built a wing leading from the kitchen. This contained two simply furnished bedrooms which the four girls were to occupy.
Betsy Clossen was the last to fall asleep. She kept wondering where she had seen Trujillo before. Nowhere, that she could remember, and yet, if not, why did she seem to be haunted with the idea that she had seen him.