The Mystery of Carlitos Mexican Mystery Stories #2

Jo Ann jerked the crude, hand-made chair off the oxcart and set it down in the shade of the thatched roof of the house.

“Your throne’s ready, Your Majesty,” she called over gaily to the pale, worn-looking Mrs. Blackwell whose daughter Florence was helping her off the burro.

“Whoever heard of a throne looking like that?” laughed the slender, hazel-eyed girl beside Jo Ann. “Wait a minute.” She spread a bright rainbow-hued Mexican blanket over the chair. “Now that looks more like a throne.”

Jo Ann nodded her dark curly bob. “You’re right, Peg—as usual.” She turned to Mrs. Blackwell. “I know you’re dead tired. That long automobile trip over the rough roads was bad enough, but the ride up the mountain on that poky donkey was worse yet.”

“Poky’s the word,” put in Florence, her blue eyes twinkling. “That burro, or donkey as you call it, is all Mexican—slow but sure.”

Just as she had finished speaking, the burro flapped his ears, threw back his head, and brayed such a knowing “heehaw” that the girls laughed merrily and even Mrs. Blackwell smiled broadly.

As Mrs. Blackwell dropped down in the chair, Jo Ann remarked to her, “No queen ever had a more beautiful kingdom to look upon from her throne than you have.”

“It’s marvelous!” exclaimed Peggy as all four gazed over the far-flung view stretching out before them: rugged, cloud-tipped mountain peaks, the deep valley covered with tropical growth, and a gleaming, silver waterfall to their right.

“Gracious!” broke in Florence finally. “We’ll never get the house straightened at this rate. And will you look at that driver! I believe he’s sound asleep. He hasn’t taken a single thing off the cart yet.”

As Jo Ann reluctantly turned away, she called over to Peggy, “We’ll have three or four weeks to enjoy all this beauty—let’s get busy now and help Florence straighten up the house. You just sit here, Mrs. Blackwell, and draw in deep breaths of this invigorating air,” she added. “Dr. Blackwell said you weren’t to turn your hand to do a thing.”

“You girls wait on me as if I were a complete invalid. Although I am tired now, I know I’m going to regain my strength rapidly up here.”

While Florence gave orders in Spanish to the driver and the boy in charge of the burros, Jo Ann and Peggy went inside the small, one-room house which was built from stone cut from the mountain side.

While they were waiting for the equipment to be brought in, the girls looked about the room curiously.

“Isn’t this the queerest little house!” Peggy exclaimed. “Not a single window in it. It’s built exactly like the little adobe huts the peons live in.”

“Florence said they bought the place from a Mexican—anyone’d know that at a glance.” Jo Ann walked over across the room to the back door and looked outside. “This must be that funny little kitchen Florence told us about,” she said, gesturing to a small stone building about fifteen feet beyond.

Just then the driver sauntered in and piled some cots and bedding in the center of the cement floor.

Jo Ann wheeled about. “Come on, Peg, let’s sweep out the house and make up the cots. We can do that much, at least.”

By the time they had the cots made up, the Mexicans had finished unloading and were starting off leisurely down the trail behind the oxcart and burros.

“Let’s stop working now and eat our lunch,” called Florence from the kitchen door. “It’s siesta time right now, and it’ll do all of us good to take a nap.”

Peggy grinned over at Florence. “Maybe Jo Ann’ll take a siesta up here. Remember the trouble she got into up on the roof in town during a siesta hour?”

“Don’t worry about me this time. There’s no mysterious window in this house for me to investigate, as there was there.”

“I bet we won’t be here three days before you’ll find some mystery to solve, Sherlock,” teased Peggy.

“Well, Sherlock’s too hungry to look for mysteries now. Let’s eat.”

“That’s what I say,” agreed Florence. “You girls unpack the eats while I go to the spring for some cool water.”

After they had eaten their lunch and had their siestas, the girls worked another hour putting down rugs, arranging gay pillows and blankets on the cots, and making a dressing table out of a packing box.

“Before we start straightening out things in the kitchen, I believe I’d better go down to the goat ranch,” Florence remarked. “I want to see if I can make arrangements to get milk there every day.”

“You mean—goat’s milk?” Peggy asked in dismay, stopping in the middle of slipping a gay cretonne cover on a pillow.

Florence’s eyes twinkled roguishly. “Well, what’s the matter with goat’s milk? That’s what the Mexicans use. When in Mexico do as the Mexicans do.” Seeing the sick-looking expression on both Peggy’s and Jo Ann’s faces, she hastened to explain: “I was just teasing. They raise the goats for market. The natives are as fond of goat’s meat as they are of the milk. They had a cow at this ranch when we were here last year, and——”

“Let’s hope they still have that cow,” put in Peggy quickly.

“So say I,” added Jo Ann emphatically.

Florence picked up the bucket from the rough board table. “Do either of you girls want to go with me?”

“Jo, I know you’re just dying to get out of doors and tramp a bit,” Peggy remarked. “You go with Florence, and I’ll stay here with Mrs. Blackwell.”

“Fine! I’d love it.”

“We won’t be gone long,” Florence told her mother as she and Jo Ann started out the door.

A few minutes later they disappeared down a winding trail back of the house. About halfway down the trail Jo Ann halted a moment to enjoy the beautiful scenery. “This is the life for me!” she exclaimed. “I had a good time in the city, but give me the outdoors. I can hardly wait to begin exploring these mountains.”

About ten minutes later they came in sight of a little pink adobe hut perched on a narrow ledge jutting out from the steep rocky cliff. It looked to Jo Ann as if the hut might topple off any minute and fall into the valley below.

“That’s the goat ranch,” explained Florence.

“The goat ranch! All I see is a hut and a stone wall. Why’d they build a house way up there instead of in that fertile valley?”

“I suppose it’s because that steep cliff back of the hut saved them from so much work in making an enclosure for their goats.”

“I don’t see any goats. Where are they?”