“You sure may,” Dick said. “It’s this way. The Newcombs, generous as they have been, can’t afford to keep those children clothed and fed. Moreover they ought to go to school next fall and between now and then, some money must be found and so—”
“Oh! Oh! I see!” Dora glowed at him. “Jerry thinks that it is a cruel shame to have this poor family in desperate need when Mr. Lucky Loon has a tomb full of gold helping no one.”
Dick smiled. “Now I’m sure you’re a mind reader. Although,” he corrected, “Jerry didn’t just put it that way. But what he did say was that if we could find out definitely that Bodil Pedersen is dead and that there is no one else to claim that buried treasure, perhaps the old storekeeper, Mr. Silas Harvey, might give us the letter he has, telling where it is hidden.”
“Did Jerry think the money might be used for that poor family?” Dora asked.
Dick nodded. “He did, if Mr. Harvey consented. Jerry feels, and so do I, that if Bodil Pedersen hasn’t turned up in thirty years, she probably never will. Of course it would be by the merest chance that she would drift into this isolated mountain town, anyway, even if she is alive, which Jerry thinks is very doubtful.”
Dora was thoughtful for a moment. “Did Mr. Pedersen advertise in the papers for his lost sister?”
“We wondered about that and this morning we asked Mr. Newcomb. He said he distinctly remembered the story in the Douglas paper, and that afterwards it was copied all over the state.”
“Goodness!” Dora suddenly ejaculated as she glanced about her. “I’ve been so terribly interested in that poor family, I hardly noticed where we were going. We’ve crossed the desert road and here we are right at the mountains.”
“How bleak and grim this range is,” Dick said, then, turning to look back across the desert valley to a low wooded range in the purple distance, he added, “Those mountains across there, where the Newcomb ranch is, are lots more friendly and likeable, aren’t they? They seem to have pleasant things to tell about their past, but these mountains—” the boy paused.
“Oh, I know.” Dora actually shuddered. “These seem cruel as though they wanted people who tried to cross over them to die of thirst, or to be hurled over their precipices, or—” suddenly her tone became one of alarm. “Dick, did you know we were going up into these awful mountains?”