The girls had returned to the kitchen and were huddled as far from the front room as they could get and were whispering together excitedly.
“Well,” Betsy confessed. “I’ve always wanted a mystery to unravel, but I seem doomed to failure now that I really have one. It grows more mysterious every minute.”
Margaret had to laugh at her friend’s dismal expression. “Betsy,” she said to tease, “I’ll dare you to ride down to the cellar room in your elevator chair and see who is hiding there. Someone must be, for he just went down the spiral stairs and locked the door behind him.”
The would-be detective shook her head. “I told you this morning that the machinery is broken. That chair is doomed to remain in the cellar.”
To verify her statement, Betsy drew the reluctant Margaret toward the door, opened it cautiously and peered into the front room. Then she closed it with a bang, and turned a pale face toward the girls. “The chair—it’s in its right place. Someone has ridden up in it and must be hiding in the front room. How I wish Peyton would come. I for one have had enough mystery to last for a lifetime.”
“Here comes brother, and someone is riding at his side. I declare, it’s Trujillo, and so the intruder must be someone else. I do wish they would hurry. I’m expecting any minute that something is going to happen,” Babs declared.
Margaret, who had opened the door leading to the back porch, uttered an exclamation of astonishment, then, turning she beckoned as she said: “Come, quick! Something is happening right this minute.”
What the girls, crowding into the open doorway, saw was the figure of a peon crouching and creeping along behind a hedge of mesquite bushes. He kept watching the trail down which he saw Peyton and Trujillo descending, and, when they were close to him, he lay flat on the sand burrowing as deep as he could in his endeavor to escape detection.
The riders, deeply engrossed in their conversation, were not looking in that direction, and when Margaret saw that they were riding past the mesquite clump without seeing the hiding peon, she ran out on the porch and hallooed to them, making frantic motions. These might not have been understood by the two riders, but the ignorant and greatly frightened Mexican, believing that his hiding place was being revealed, took to his feet and raced for the sand hills. Peyton and Trujillo, seeing him, wheeled their horses and galloped in pursuit, and he was quickly overtaken.
“It is Pinez, whom we recently engaged.” Trujillo said in English, which the peon could not understand. “I have been watching him for several days. Last week I sent him to town for my mail and I was convinced that one of my letters was being withheld from me.” Then turning to the sullen peon, he asked: “Pinez, why were you hiding? Have you a letter that belongs to me?”