“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.