The Desert Moon Mystery by Kay Cleaver Strahan

The girls had been on the Desert Moon a little better than six weeks when, one evening, Sam came out into my kitchen were I was setting bread. Belle, Sadie and Goldie had gone home, and I had tidied up after them, as usual, and everything in the kitchen was sweet, and clean, and shining. I had the doors tight shut, so I couldn't hear the radio screeching away in the living-room, and the windows open, and the evening breeze fresh from the deserts came in, blowing back my ruffled white curtains and purifying the air.

"Mary," Sam began, real solemn for him, "the ancients used to have cities that they called cities of refuge. No matter what a fellow had done, if he could get inside into one of those cities, he was safe. Your kitchen always kinda seems like that to me-a city of refuge."

"Lands, Sam," I said, "what have you been up to that you are heading this safety first movement?"

To tell the truth, I was a little put out with him for moseying in there when I was setting bread. Like most men I've known, Sam never had any particular hankering for my company unless he thought I could be of some use to him. Generally, I am glad and proud to help Sam, anyway I can; but not when I am setting bread. There is something about setting bread that gives any moral woman a contented, uplifted feeling that she likes to indulge in, undisturbed.

"I haven't been up to anything," Sam answered, "and I don't aim to be. But, Mary, some time ago you came to me with some suspicions. I laughed them off. I am not laughing now. I'm worried. Queer things are going on around here. What I want to know, now, is what do you know?"

"Nothing. What do you know?"

"Nothing."

"What do you suspect, then, Sam?"

"Nothing. What do you?"

"Nothing."

That, I see now, wouldn't have been a bad place for us both to laugh. Neither of us did.

"Have you any idea," Sam questioned, "why the girls go prowling all over the place, afoot and horseback, day-times, and night-times, too, when they should be in their beds?"

I unfolded a dishtowel and spread it over my pan of bread. It was ready for rising and I had not got a bit of uplift out of it.

"If I told you," I said, "you'd only speak your little memory-gem, about so much good in the worst of us."

"No, I won't, Mary. I'm all set for listening."

"Well, all I know is just what I've known all along. They are hunting for something."

"Sure they are hunting for something. But what?"

"I don't know. But, whatever it is, they are going to use it to get revenge, to injure maliciously somebody."

"Revenge, hell! " Sam said.

"Have it your own way. Only I happened one night to hear Gaby say to Danny that they had come to this ranch for the purpose of revenge."