Tommy smiled. "I think Kie had a lot to do with it. I think he put
Ramon up to selling it to me. But I don't know why."
"I wonder why Kie didn't take back the map when you offered it to him?
That surprised me. Usually he doesn't turn down any kind of a gift."
"He didn't need this map," said Tommy quietly.
"How do you know?"
"Because the map had been copied before I got it. The tracing marks were on it for a full day, then disappeared. I don't pretend to know why," Tommy turned away from the map, and one could see that he was not interested.
"It's a mystery," exclaimed Enid. "Get to work, Bet Baxter. The mystery of the treasure map! We'll give you a week to solve the problem."
"Don't do it, Bet, please don't! If you go mooning away about treasures and all that sort of thing, we'll miss half the fun of the ranch. When you hunt for treasure, it's work, work, work! And a big disappointment in the end," advised Kit Patten.
"I've always had a yearning to dig for something. Once when I was a little girl, Uncle Nat was digging in our garden and he found an old rusty cannon ball and a piece of a flintlock, and ever since that I've always wanted to get a shovel and dig." Bet's voice had a longing in it that set the girls into screams of laughter.
"You ridiculous girl!" cried Joy affectionately. "You would try to start something!"
"But you'll have to acknowledge that Bet usually finds what she goes out after," remarked the quiet Shirley, pointing her camera toward the canyon wall opposite Tommy's door. "And while we usually object, we've never had more fun or thrills than when she leads us into adventure."