Dick flashed a radiant smile which made his rather plain face momentarily good-looking. “Some,” he said, “when I was a kid on Granddad’s farm just out of Boston.”
Jerry, a little ahead, was leading them slowly across soft shimmering sand toward a narrow entrance in cliff-like rocks.
Dora protested, “Mary ought to know how to ride a cow pony since she was born right here on the desert while I have always lived on the Hudson River until two weeks ago.”
“Even so,” Mary retaliated brightly, “but, as you know, I left here when I was eight to go East to school and since I have never been back, I haven’t much advantage over you.”
The cowboy turned in his saddle and there was a tender light in his eyes as he looked at the younger girl. “I’m sure glad something fetched you back, Mary, though I’m mighty sorry it was your dad’s illness that did it.”
Dora, glancing at the pretty face of her best friend, saw the frank, friendly smile she gave the cowboy. To herself she thought,—“Jerry certainly thinks Mary is the sweetest thing he ever saw, but she only thinks of him as a nice boy who once, long ago, was her childhood playmate.”
They had reached the narrow entrance in the wall of rocks. It was a mysterious looking spot; a giant gateway leading, the girls knew not where. On the gleaming sand near the entrance lay a half-buried skeleton. It looked as though it might have been that of a man rather than a beast. The girls exchanged startled glances, but, as Jerry was riding unconcernedly through the gateway, they silently followed.
“What a dramatic sort of place!” Dora exclaimed in an awed voice as she gazed about her.
They were on a floor of sand that was circled about by low mountains, grim, gray, uninviting. Here and there in crevices a twisted dwarf tree clung, its roots exposed. There was a death-like silence in the place. Even the soft rush of wind over the desert outside could not be heard.
Mary shuddered and rode closer to the cowboy. “Jerry,” she said, “why have you brought us here? Is there something that you want to show us?”