CHAPTER VII--A MYSTERIOUS AFFAIR

"You needn't be 'fraid of not findin' room at Lon Crujes' hotel," drawled the station agent. "He don't often have more'n two visitors at a time there, and them's mostly travelin' salesmen. Only when somebody's shippin' cattle. And there ain't no cattlemen here now."

"Well, that is some relief, at least," Helen said promptly. "Come on, Tommy! Lead the procession. Take Miss Cullam's bag, too. The rest of us will carry our own."

"How can we get the trunks up to the hotel?" asked Ruth, beginning to realize that Tom, to whom she had left all the arrangements, was in a "pickle."

"Let's see what the hotel looks like first," returned Helen's twin, setting off along the dusty street.

A dog barked at the procession; but otherwise the inhabitants of Yucca showed a disposition to remain incurious. It was not necessary to ask the way to Lon Crujes' hotel; it was the only building in town large enough to be dignified by the name of "Yucca House."

A Mexican woman in a one-piece garment gathered about her waist by a man's belt from which an empty gun-sheath dangled, met the party on the porch of the house. She seemed surprised to see them.

"You ain't them folks that telegraphed Lon you was comin', are you?" she asked. "Don't that beat all!"

"I telegraphed ahead for rooms--yes," Tom said.

"Well, the rooms is here all right--by goodness, yes!" she said, still staring. Such an array of feminine finery as the girls displayed had probably never dawned upon Mrs. Crujes' vision before. "Nobody ain't run off with the rooms. We ain't never crowded none in this hotel, 'cept in beef shippin' time."

"Well, how about meals?" Tom asked quietly.

"If Lon gets home with a side of beef he went for, we'll be all right," the woman said. "You kin all come in, I reckon. But say! who was them gals here yesterday, then, if 'twasn't you."

"What girls?" asked Ruth, who remained with Tom to inquire.

"Have they gone away again?" demanded Tom.

"By goodness, yes! Two gals. One was tenderfoot all right; but 'tother knowed her way 'round, I sh'd say."

"Ann?" queried Ruth of Tom.

"Must have been. But the other--Say, Mrs. Crujes, tell us about them, will you, please?" he asked the Mexican woman.

"Why, this tenderfoot gal dropped off the trans-continental. Jest the train we expected you folks on. I s'pose you was the folks we expected?"

"That's right. We're the ones," said Tom, hastily. "Go on."

"The other lady, _she_ come later. She's Western all right."

"Ann is from Montana," Ruth said, deeply interested.

"So she said. I reckoned she never met up with the Eastern gal before, did she?"

"But who is the girl you speak of--the one from the East?" gasped Ruth.

"Huh! Don't you know her neither?"

"I'm not sure I couldn't guess," Ruth declared. Tom kept his lips tightly closed.

"They made friends, then," explained the woman. "The gal you say you know, and the tenderfoot. And they went off together this morning with Flapjack----"

"Not with our guide?" cried Ruth. "Oh, Tom! what can it mean?"

"Got me," grunted the young fellow.

"Why! it is the most mysterious affair," Ruth repeated. "I can't understand it."

"Leave it to me," said Tom, quickly. "You go in with the other girls and primp."

"Primp, indeed!"

"I suppose you'll have to here, just the same as anywhere else," the boy said, with a quick grin. "I'll look around and see what's happened. Of course, that Flapjack person can't have gone far."

"And Ann wouldn't have run away from us, I'm sure," Ruth sent back over her shoulder as she entered the hotel.

Before the Mexican woman could waddle after Ruth, Tom hailed her again. "Say!" he asked, "where can I find this Peters chap?"

"The Señor Flapjack?"

"Yes. Fine name, that," he added in an undertone.

"He it is who is famous at making the American flapjack--_si si!_" said the woman. "But he is gone I tell you. I know not where. Maybe Lon, he can tell you when he come back with the beef--by goodness, yes!"

"But he lives here in town, doesn't he? Hasn't he a family?"

"Oh, sure! He's got Min."

"Who's Min? A Chinaman?"

"Chink? Can you beat it?" ejaculated the woman, grinning broadly. "Min's his daughter. See that house down there with the front painted yellow?"

"Yes," admitted Tom, rather abashed.

"That's where Flapjack, he live. Sure! And Min can tell you where he's gone and how long he'll be away."

The hotel proprietor's wife disappeared, bustling away to attend to the wants of this party of guests that was apt to swamp her entire menage. Tom hesitated about searching out the guide's daughter alone. "Min" promised embarrassing possibilities to his mind.

"Jiminy! we're up against it, I believe," he thought. "They'll all blame me, I suppose. I ought not to have gone to sleep night before last and missed sending those last telegrams from Janesburg.

"Father will say I wasn't 'tending to business properly. I wonder what I'd better do."

Ruth suddenly reappeared. She had merely gone inside to get rid of her bag and assure Miss Cullam that there were some matters she and Tom had to attend to. Now she approached her chum's brother with a question that excited and startled him.

"What under the sun could have made her act so, do you suppose, Tom?"

"Huh? Who?" he gasped.

"That girl. She's gone off with our guide and all."

"Who do you mean? Jane Ann Hicks?"

"Goodness! I don't understand Ann's part in it, either. But she's not the leading spirit, it is evident."

"Who do you mean, then?" Tom demanded.

"Edith Phelps. Of course it is she. She arrived here on the trans-continental train on time. Tommy, she was in correspondence with somebody here in Yucca. Helen and I saw the envelope. And it puzzled us. Her being on the train puzzled me more. And now----"

"Oh, Jiminy!" ejaculated Tom Cameron. "The mystery deepens. Rival picture company, maybe, Ruth. How about it?"

"I don't think it's _that_," said Ruth Fielding, reflectively. "I am sure Edie Phelps has no connection with movie people--no, indeed!"