“It’s too bad to disappoint you, Betsy, but that’s about the way all of your hoped-for adventures will end,” Virginia told her friend.
The four girls, Virginia Davis, the seventeen-year-old mistress of V. M. Ranch and her adopted sister, Margaret Selover, who was sixteen, their neighbor, Barbara Blair Wente, also sixteen, and Virginia’s guest, Betsy Clossen, who as yet was but fifteen, had traveled from Vine Haven, where they had been attending boarding school for the past year.
Although the other three girls were well acquainted with the Arizona desert, Betsy Clossen had never been west of Chicago. However, she had often frequented that big city, as she had many others in the east, for her father was a famous detective who was often following clues that led him from Chicago to New York, and, at first, not wanting to be parted from his motherless little girl, he had taken her with him, but at last, believing that he was doing the child an injustice, he had placed her in the Vine Haven boarding school, where she had since remained, making friends of all whom she met. The years she had spent as her father’s close companion had given her an insight into the ways of unraveling mysteries and the game had fascinated her adventure-loving nature.
To the great amusement of the girls she was always trying to imagine a mystery that she might solve it, but in the past year she had twice failed while two of her comrades who had no such ambition had been successful, and so, no wonder was it that Betsy looked forward to the desert as a place where she would surely find a mystery to solve.
Virginia, who had been born on the V. M. Ranch, which was twenty miles from the town of Douglas, and who had lived there all her seventeen years, was indeed overjoyed because she was returning to the home she so loved, to her very dear brother Malcolm Davis and to old Uncle Tex, who, when he was younger, had been the foreman of V. M.
The father of Barbara Wente had recently purchased the Dartley Ranch which was four miles north of V. M. This he had given to his son Peyton. Barbara had learned that the old house was interesting, but she had never seen it as, with the other girls, she had left almost at once after the deal had been completed, for the school in the east.
“What do you think, Virg?” Babs chattered as the four girls with their hats on and their bags ready, sat peering ahead, “Peyton wrote in his very last letter that he hasn’t even opened the old ranch house yet. He is leaving it for us to do.”
“I adore old houses,” Betsy began, when Virginia exclaimed as she pointed out the windows. “See that dark hole in the mountain just ahead of us?” The others leaned forward to look.
“Oh, good!” Margaret exclaimed. “It’s the last tunnel, and Silver Creek station is just beyond.” Megsy turned toward her adopted sister, a flushed eagerness betraying the excitement she felt. “Just think, Virg, in ten minutes we are to see Malcolm.”
Betsy uttered a little excited squeal as the train plunged into the darkness of the tunnel.