The Desert Moon Mystery by Kay Cleaver Strahan

Revenge. Out of all that crazy conversation the one word kept pestering me like a leaking faucet. No matter what I was doing, or thinking, that word, revenge, kept drip, drip, dripping, until my mind was fairly drenched with it. I got all mixed up about it. Did people revenge other people, or have revenge on them, or-what? I looked it up in the dictionary. "Malicious injuring in return for an injury or offense received."

I got a piece of paper and wrote it down. "The Canneziano girls want to injure, maliciously, some one on the Desert Moon Ranch, in return for an injury or an offense received. " I crossed out "The Canneziano girls," and wrote, "Gabrielle Canneziano," since Danny had said that she had never considered that side of it at all. It did not help any. It did not make sense.

Since Sam and I were the only people on the ranch they had known before they came here this time, it seemed as if they had come to injure, maliciously, one of us. I had never done either of them a mite of harm in my life. Sam had never done anything but good for them. Of course, Sam had not been very gentle with their father. But, as I took pains to discover, neither of them had any kind feelings for their father. Gaby said, straight out, that she hated him. Danny, who was too gentle speaking to use such a word as hate, said that she had never liked him, never loved him. Both of them laid their mother's death at Canneziano's door. They thought that his cruelty and his neglect had killed her. It was senseless to suppose that they were harboring a grudge against Sam for anything that he had ever done to Canneziano.

Of course, I see now that all that part of it was as plain as the Roman nose on Hubert Hand's face. How I missed seeing it, even then, I don't know. I was, I guess, like a little boy so busy trying to watch all three rings at the circus at one time that he missed the elephant parade.

The Desert Moon was like that sure enough; like a three ring circus, during the months of May and June. There were the girls, everlastingly searching for something: leaving the house shortly after the men left it, each morning; returning, tired out, just in time for dinner; off again for the afternoon, and coming home just in time to pretty up for supper. After a while, I began to lose interest in that; and, being a woman, I allowed my attention to become distracted by the center ring where all the love interest was going on.

Not that Danny and John were interesting. If there is anything that will make two people duller to all other people than being engaged to each other, I am sure I don't know what it is. Gaby's unceasing efforts to win John away from Danny were interesting enough, I suppose, to folks who can stand to look at that sort of thing. Personally, I shut my eyes to it as much as possible. Most of my attention I gave to the clown in the ring-to Chad.

I can not explain it, now or ever; but Chad, from the very first, was head over heels in love with Gaby. He had no more chance of winning her, penniless, funny, kind little fellow that he was, than an amateur has of riding an outlaw pony. I told him that, once, in those very words.

"I know it, Mary," he said. "But you are wrong about one thing. I'm not riding for a fall. I'm not even mounted. I know I haven't a chance with her. I know I can't pull one of those stars out of the sky up there with a fishhook. I'm not trying. But I can sit here in the dark and look at the stars, can't I? Stars make all the difference-in the dark. And, maybe, sometime I can serve her in someway. That's all I ask. . " So on. If it hadn't been Chad, and therefore heartbreaking, it would have been downright funny.

She never gave him two looks. He couldn't even make her laugh with his jokes and his songs, as he could the rest of us. Once she did deign to allow him to try to teach her the trick of his ventriloquism. She could not learn it, and she was furious with him, and said that he did not want her to learn it. But he followed her about, and waited on her. He brought her pony up to the house, instead of allowing one of the outfit to do it. He brought her desert flowers, which she tossed away to wither. If Connie hadn't had a strong constitution he would have worn her out, taking pictures of Gaby. Page after page in his album filled with, "Gaby by the window; " "Gaby on the porch; " "Gaby and Danny starting on a walk; " "Gaby in riding costume; " Gaby here, there, and everywhere. And Martha half mad with jealousy.

Right at first, I think that some of the others thought that Martha's jealousy was something of a joke. I never did think so. Before long we all began to feel that it was more than a little serious. Sam talked to Chad, and to Gaby about it. Chad did the best he could, after that, to be as attentive to Martha as he had been before; but, if he so much as opened a door for Gaby, Martha would go into temper fits, and sulking spells.

As for Gaby, Sam's talk with her made things worse. She had never noticed Chad at all, so she had not noticed that Martha was jealous of him. She welcomed the news as another tool she could use to tease and torment the poor girl. All along she had delighted in teasing and tormenting Martha, though she had dared not do it when Sam was present.

The very evening after Sam had talked to her in the morning, Gaby went and sat beside Chad and curled his pretty, yellow curls around her finger.

It was a cloudy evening, not chilly; but Sam had lighted the fire as he always does when he has half an excuse, and Martha was sitting in front of it, pretending to read a magazine. She had been pretending to read that same magazine, on the same page, for the last five years. She seemed to get pleasure out of sitting and holding it in her hands. No other magazine would do.