“Nary a spring,” the cowboy told them. “These mountains and the desert around here are bone dry. That’s why there’s so many skeletons of cows hereabout. Some reckoned that he rode away nights to a town where he wasn’t known. He might have stayed away for days and got back in the night without anyone knowing.”
“But, Jerry, what happened to him in the end? Does anybody know? Did he go away?” Dora and Dick were questioning when Mary cried in sudden alarm, “Oh, Jerry, he isn’t here now, is he?”
It was Dora who replied, “Of course not, Mary. You know Jerry wouldn’t bring us in here if there was any danger of our being shot.”
“I reckon Sven Pedersen’s been dead this long time back,” the cowboy told them. “Father was a kid when Lucky Loon was old. Dad says he and some other kids watched around the gate rocks, taking turns for almost a week. They reckoned if the old hermit had gone away, they’d like to climb up there and find the Evil Eye Turquoise Sven had boasted so much about before he shut himself up.”
“Did they climb up there?”
“What was the eye?”
“One question at a time, please,” Jerry told the eager girls. “No, they didn’t go. Dad said it was his turn to watch one night. There was a cutting wind and since it was very dark, he thought he’d just slip inside of the rock gate where the blowing sand wouldn’t hit him. Dad got sort of sleepy, after a time, crouched down on the sand, when suddenly he heard a gun bang. He leaped out of the gate, up on his horse and galloped for home. He laughs when he tells that story. He reckons now that he’d dreamed the shot since Sven Pedersen never was seen again and that was thirty years ago.” The cowboy had looked at his watch. “Jumping Steers!” he exclaimed. “Most milking time and here I’m fifteen miles from the ranch. Dick, will you ride home with the girls?”
Jerry had whirled his horse’s head and had started for the gateway, the others quickly following. Dick, at the end, was just passing through the gate when they distinctly heard the report of a gun.
CHAPTER II
THE GHOST TOWN
Safely outside of the wall of rocks, the four young people drew their restless horses to a standstill. Mary’s nettlesome brown pony was hard to quiet until Jerry reached out a strong brown hand and patted its head.