“Horrible!” echoed Jo Ann. “No wonder you were frightened, Peg,” she added quickly. “They’re only mummies, but if I hadn’t read about them I’d have been paralyzed. But what made you come up here after you said you’d stay where we left you?”
“I got tired waiting for you—I thought you’d never come—so I decided to explore this tunnel a little way. I got lost for a while; and then on my way back I found this door. It wouldn’t open at first, so I pushed hard—and then I tumbled head foremost into that room. When I turned on my light and saw those horrible creatures—well, I ’most died from fright. I thought they were alive.”
“You poor child,” comforted Florence. “We should never have left you alone.”
“What made you two stay so long?”
“We went farther than we expected, and Jo got stuck in a hole.”
Peggy turned to Jo Ann. “You would do something like that! What kind of a hole was it?”
“Just a little opening in a cave-in. I wanted to see what was on the other side. I dropped my flashlight over there and got stuck trying to get it.”
“I had to pull her out—I had a time doing it,” Florence added.
“That wasn’t nearly as much trouble as I got into,” said Peggy with a gesture toward the door. “How’d those hideous things ever get in there?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” replied Jo Ann. “I’ve read that they’ve been found in some parts of Mexico, and that they’re different from the ancient Egyptian mummies in that no preservatives were used. The air in certain parts of this country has such drying qualities in it that centuries ago people discovered that they could keep bodies perfectly without the use of preservatives.”