The Desert Moon Mystery by Kay Cleaver Strahan

The first minute I heard that the Canneziano girls were coming to the Desert Moon, I was certain that they were not coming for the peace of the mountains and the deserts. Going on from there, I questioned myself as to what reason any Canneziano had ever had for coming to the ranch, or for writing to the ranch. The answer was, to get money. I tried to think that they would stay a few months, long enough to put themselves in Sam's good graces, ask him for a tidy sum, and leave. But they had not been on the place two days before I knew that, though that might be a minor part of their plan, it was not the major part; that there was something far less simple, something, probably, treacherous and sinister at the root of this visit of theirs to the Desert Moon.

On the evening of their arrival the girls had unpacked their trunks in their bedrooms. The next morning the boys carried their trunks to the attic. Going through the upper hall, later that same morning, I saw one of the empty drawers that had fitted into their new-fangled trunks, lying beside the door to the attic stairway.

I hate clutter. I picked it up and carried it upstairs. I went in all good faith: but I wear rubber-soled shoes around the house, and the stairs are thickly carpeted; so the girls, who were up there, did not hear me coming. Just before I got to the turn in the stairs, I heard one of them say:

"I am sure that there is no use in searching the house. In the first place, he never could have gotten it into the house without being seen."

"You are too sure of everything, when you are unsure of anything," the other girl answered, and I thought, since the voice was louder and, somehow, richer, that it was Gaby's. "Stop being sure, and try being sensible. We must find it. We have very little time. How do you know whether he could have brought it into the house or not? There is a back stairway."

Fool that I was, I kept right on going up the stairs. It took me a while to develop the poll-prying, eavesdropping, sneaking, and generally despicable character that I did develop later.

"Did you girls lose something? " I asked, when my head had poked up to where I could see them.

Danny jumped, from being startled, but Gaby never turned a hair.

"Only a trinket of Dan's," she said. "Possibly she never packed it at all."

I gave them the trunk drawer and came back downstairs, wracking my brain with questions.

Who was the "he" who had, or who had not, gotten something into the house? The something that they must find, and had very little time in which to find it. And, land's alive, what was the something?

I resolved to say nothing, but to watch those two girls, like a hawk, from then on. I did so. But it was three weeks before I heard anything more at all, though I saw a great deal.

I saw those girls searching, searching everlastingly, the entire place. I saw them go to the cabin, and stay inside of it for hours. I saw them in the barnyards, and in the barns, searching. I saw them down in the outfit's quarters when the men were all away. I heard them get up late at night, and sneak out of the house, and come back in the early hours of the morning. And, once or twice, I thought that I saw them seeing me, as I watched them, and then I was afraid.

It was during these three weeks that Danny and John announced their engagement. My own opinion is that they got themselves engaged the first five minutes they were alone together; but that they had gumption enough to wait for ten days before telling it.

Sam gave them his blessing. That is to say, he said that any agreement they wanted to make was all right with him, if Danny was sure she would be satisfied to live on the Desert Moon, and if they would wait a year to be married. They agreed to this, the year of waiting, reluctantly. Sam, whose one bad habit, not counting his pipe, is using suitable and unsuitable quotations on all suitable and unsuitable occasions, assured them that a year was as a day on the Desert Moon; but that didn't seem to make them any happier. The only people who were downright pleased with Sam's decision were Gaby and myself. I, for certain reasons of my own. Gaby, because she was choosing to consider herself also in love with John.

I realize that this is crowding pretty fast what the books call "love interest. " I realize, too, that I have not given any description of John that would account for two traveled ladies coming to the Desert Moon and, at once, falling in love with him.

He had, as I guess I've signified, a heap more than his share of masculine good looks. Outside of hat and collar advertisements, I don't know that I've ever seen even pictures of men that were any better looking than John was. The way he lived, and dressed, and rode, made him sort of romantic, too, I suppose. A Santa Fe man, who met him once when he was taking cattle back east for Sam, offered him a surprising salary to come to the Grand Canyon and live around there, in order to impress and delight the eastern young lady tourists. John was simple-hearted, and slow spoken; but I guess most women don't mind that in men. Too, he was a good boy, all the way through. And, of course, he had plenty of money, now, and would have a million or more, not counting the ranch, when Sam died.

Gaby made no bones about her feelings for John. I did not do as John did, and set all of her open advances toward him down to sister-in-lawly affection. Still, I didn't believe that she really thought she was in love with John, until I hid in the clothes-closet that evening and heard Danny and her talking together.