The cowboy nodded. “You recollect that Dora was saying how she wished there was a mystery she could solve—” he began, when he was interrupted.
“Oh, Jerry,” Dora’s dark eyes glowed with anticipation, “is there really a mystery here—in this awfully bleak place? What? Where? I don’t see anything at all but those almost straight up and down cliffs and—”
There was an exultant exclamation from Dick Farley. Perhaps his strong spectacles gave him clearer sight.
“I see a house, honest Injun, I do, or something that looks powerfully like one.” He turned questioning eyes toward the cowboy.
“Righto! You’re clever, old man!” Jerry Newcomb told him. “Don’t tell where it is. See if the girls can find it.”
For a long silent moment Mary and Dora sat in their saddles turning their gaze slowly about the low circling mountains.
Dora’s excited cry told the others that she saw it, and Mary, noting the direction of her friend’s gaze, saw, high on a narrow ledge, what looked like a wall made of small rocks with openings that might have been meant for two windows and a door. The flat roof could not be seen from the floor of the desert.
“How perfectly thrilling!” Dora cried. “What was it, Jerry, an Indian cliff dwelling?”
The cowboy shook his head. “Let’s ride up closer,” he said. He led the way to the very base of the low mountain. The ledge, which had one time been the front yard of the house, had been cracked by the elements and leaned outward, leaving a crevice of about twenty feet. There were no steps leading up to the house. It was, as far as the three Easterners could see, without a way of approach.
Dick Farley rode about examining the spot from all angles. “Jerry,” he said at last, “if it isn’t an Indian dwelling, who did live there? Surely not a white family!”