“Because I reckoned no one would disturb us. The Dooley twins overrun the old barn sometimes but they can’t climb up here with the top board missing.”
The battered leather box lay in the middle of the room and the two girls looking down at it had a strangely uncanny feeling. Jerry evidently had not, for he was about to lift the lid when Mary caught his arm, exclaiming, “Big Brother, what was it Silas Harvey said about a ghost? I mean, didn’t Mr. Pedersen threaten to haunt——”
The interruption was the crackling report of a gun that was very close to them.
“Great heavens, what was that?” Mary screamed and clung to Jerry terrified.
“It wasn’t a ghost who fired that shot,” the cowboy told them. “It was someone just outside the barn. Don’t be frightened, girls. It can’t be anyone who wants to harm us. Wait, I’ll call out the window here.”
Jerry pulled open a wooden blind and shouted, “Who’s there?”
His father’s voice replied, “Lucky I happened along when I did. An ugly rattler was wriggling, half dead from a wound, right along the path here and its mate was coiled in a sage bush watching it.”
Dora seized Dick’s arm. “I heard it!” she cried excitedly. “That’s what I heard when you began to—”
“Aw, I say, Dora,” Dick was truly remorseful, “I’m terribly sorry. I just didn’t want you to be using your imagination and frightening yourself needlessly.”
Mary sank down on a dusty old box. “I’m absolutely limp,” she said. “Now, if a ghost appears when we open that trunk, I’ll simply collapse.”