CHAPTER XI

THE SKELETON STAGE COACH

Mary, slender, light of foot, sprang like a gazelle from step to step feeling safe, since Jerry towered in front of her. The firm clasp of his big hand on her small white one made her feel protected and cared for and she was really enjoying the adventure.

Dora, athletic of build and sure-footed, refused Dick’s proffered aid, depending on the scraggly growths in the crevices for support until they reached a spot where only prickly-pear cactus grew.

“Now, Miss Independent,” Dick laughingly called up to her, “you would better put one hand on my shoulder and let me be your human staff.”

This plan proved successful until, in the descent, they came to a spot where the ledge below was farther than the girls could step. Jerry held up his arms and lifted Mary down. That was not a difficult feat since she was but a featherweight. Dora, broad shouldered for a girl and heavily built, was more of a problem. The boys finally made steps for her, Jerry offering his shoulders and Dick his bent back.

Dora, flushed, excited, glanced at the ledge above as she exclaimed, “Getting up again will be even more difficult.”

“We won’t cross bridges until we get to them,” Dick began, then added, “or climb mountains either. Going down at present requires our entire attention.”

But the narrow ledge-steps continued to be accommodatingly close for about fifteen feet; then another sheer descent was covered by repeating their former tactics.

“There, now we’re on the wide ledge,” Mary said, “and we can’t see a single thing that’s beneath us.” Then she cried out as a sudden alarming thought came to her. “Oh, Jerry, _what_ if our weight should cause a rock-slide, or whatever it’s called, and we all were plunged—”

“Pull in on fancy’s rein, Little Sister!” the cowboy begged. “You may be sure I examined the formation of this ledge before I lifted you down upon it.” Then, turning to Dora, he said, “I reckon you and Mary’d better stay close to the mountain while Dick and I worm ourselves, Indian fashion, to the very edge where we can see what’s down below.”

“Righto!” Dora slipped an arm about Mary and together they stood and watched the boys lying face downward and wriggling their long bodies over the flat, stone ledge.

Dora noticed how slim and frail Dick’s form looked and how sinewy and strong was Jerry.

The edge reached, the boys gazed down, but almost instantly Jerry had whirled to an upright position and the watching girls could not tell whether his expression was more of terror than of exultation. Surely there was a mingling of both.

Dick, who had backed several feet before sitting upright, was frankly shocked by what he had seen.

For a moment neither of them spoke. “Boys!” Dora cried. “The stage coach is down there, isn’t it? But since you expected to find it, _why_ are you so startled?”

Jerry was the first to reply. “Well, it’s pretty awful to see what’s left of a tragedy like that. I reckon you girls would better not look.”

“I won’t, if you don’t want me to,” Mary agreed, “but _do_ tell us about it. After all these years, what _can_ there be left?”

Jerry glanced at Dick, who, always pale, was actually white.

“I’ll confess it rather got me, just at first,” the Eastern boy acknowledged.

Dora, impatient at the slowness of the revelation, and eager to see for herself what shocking thing was over the ledge, started to walk toward the edge, but Dick, realizing her intention, sprang up and caught her arm. “Let us tell you first what we saw, Dora,” he pleaded, “and then, if you still want to see it, we won’t prevent you. It won’t be so much of a shock when you are prepared.”

“Well?” Dora stood waiting.

The boys were on their feet. Jerry began. “When the horses reared and plunged off the road, they must have rolled with the stage over and over.”

“That’s right,” Dick excitedly took up the tale, “and when the coach struck this wide ledge, it bounded, I should say, off into space and was caught in a wide crevice about twenty-five feet straight down below here.”

“Oh, Jerry,” Mary cried, “is the driver or the horses—”

The cowboy nodded vehemently. “That’s just it. That’s the terribly gruesome part. The skeletons of the horses are hanging in the harness and that poor driver—his skeleton, I mean, still sits in his seat—”

“The uncanny thing about it,” Dick rushed in, “is that his leather suit is still on his skeleton, and his fur cap, though bedraggled from the weather, is still on his bony head.”

“But his eyes are the worst!” Jerry shuddered, although seeing skeletons was no new thing to him. “Those gaping sockets are looking right up toward this ledge as though he had died gazing up toward the road hoping help would come to him.”

Suddenly Mary threw her arms about Dora and began to sob. Jerry, again self-rebuking, cried in alarm, “Oh, Little Sister, I reckon I’m a brute to shock you that-a-way.”

Dora had noticed that in times of excitement Jerry fell into the lingo of the cowboy.

Mary straightened and smiled through her tears. “Oh, I’m so sorry for that poor man, but I must remember that it all happened years ago and that _now_ we are really bent on a mission of charity.” Then, smiling up at Jerry, she held out a hand to him as she said, “_That’s_ the big thing for us to remember, isn’t it? First of all, we want, if possible, to find out if poor Little Bodil is alive and if we’re sure, oh, just _ever_ so sure, that she is dead, we want to get the gold and turquoise from Mr. Pedersen’s rock house for the Dooleys.”

Her listeners were sure that Mary was talking about their good purpose that she might quiet her nerves. It evidently had the desired effect, for, quite naturally, she asked, “If there is nothing beneath this ledge but space, how can you boys get down to the stage coach to search for clues? That’s what you planned doing, wasn’t it?”

Jerry nodded and gazed thoughtfully into the sweet face uplifted to his, though hardly seeing it. He was thinking what would be best for them to do.

“Dick,” he said finally, “you stay here with the girls. I’m going back up to the car to get my rope. I reckon if you three will hold one end of it, I can slide down on it to that crevice and—”

“Oh no, no, Jerry, don’t, _please don’t_!” Mary caught his khaki-covered arm wildly. “You would never get over the shock of being so close to that ghastly skeleton and if the rope should slip—” she covered her eyes with her hands. Then, as she heard the boys speaking together in low tones, she looked at them. “Jerry,” she said contritely, “I’m sorry I go to pieces so easily today. Of course I know you would not suggest going if you weren’t sure that it would be absolutely safe. Get the rope if you want to. I’m going to try hard to be as brave as Dora is.” Then she added wistfully, “Maybe if you weren’t my Big Brother, I wouldn’t care so much.”

Sudden joy leaped to Jerry’s eyes. How he had hoped that Mary cared a little, oh, even a _very_ little, for him, but usually she treated him in the same frank, friendly way that she did Dick.

Dora, watching, thought, “That settles it. Jerry will not go. The Dooleys and Little Bodil are nothing to him compared to one second’s anxiety for his Sister Mary.”

And it did seem for a long moment that Jerry was going to give up the entire plan. Dick, realizing this, plunged in with, “I say, old man, I know how to go down a rope. That used to be one of my favorite pastimes when I was a youngster and lived near a fire station. The good-natured firemen would let us kids slide down their slippery pole but we had to do some tall scurrying when the alarm sounded.”

Jerry looked at his friend for several thoughtful seconds before he spoke. What he said was, “I reckon you’re right, Dick, but my reason is this. I’m strong-armed and you’re not. Throwing the rope and pulling cantankerous steers around, gives a fellow an iron muscle. And you’re lighter too, a lot, so I reckon I’d better be on the end that has to be held. Now that’s settled, you stay here with the girls while I go up to the car and get my rope.”