The Desert Moon Mystery by Kay Cleaver Strahan

At five o'clock the men put up the chess board. Chad stopped playing the piano, and the three of them went to the barns together.

I went into the kitchen to get supper. Danny, in spite of her headache, insisted upon helping me. She did the best she could. She managed to get the table set, in between times when she was not running to the window to see whether John was coming.

At six o'clock, though neither John nor Gaby had returned, we sat down to supper. Danny was too nervous to touch a bit of food. She kept looking out of the windows, and at her watch, and out of the windows again.

"Don't worry, Danny," Sam said. "John has had tire trouble, on account of the heat. They'll come riding up the road any minute now."

"They? " she questioned.

"Gaby togged up and went down the road to meet John, didn't she?"

"No," Danny's voice curled into a wail. "No, Uncle Sam, she didn't. Martha saw her going to the cabin. Didn't you, Martha?"

"Martha," Mrs. Ricker astonished us all by saying, "doesn't know where Gaby went. She knows only where Gaby told her she was going."

"But why should Gaby tell her a fib about it? " Danny asked.

"And why," I questioned, "should Gaby go around the house to get to the road, instead of going right out the front way?"

Again Mrs. Ricker shocked us by speaking. "She would not go out the front way, if she wanted to keep her trip to the road a secret."

"Mrs. Ricker," Danny's voice trembled, "What are you hinting? What is it that you know?"

"I know," said Mrs. Ricker, "that there is not a man living who is not as false as sin."

Sam growled, "Come down to facts, Mrs. Ricker, if you have any."

I think it was the first time Sam had ever spoken unpleasantly to her. He betrayed his own anxiety by so doing. It was easy to see that she was cut to the quick.

"I have no facts," she said, "except, that right after dinner to-day John and Gaby had a private conversation, and he decided, very suddenly, to go for the mail."

At that minute we heard a sound for sore ears-the car coming up the driveway. Danny jumped up and ran to look out of the living-room window. "He has gone all the way around to the kitchen," she said, when she came back. If it had not been sort of pathetic, showing how worried she had been, her impatience at having to wait another minute or so to see him, would have been funny.

She ran into the kitchen. She and John came to the door of the butler's pantry. John was gray with dust. His brows were knitted, as they are whenever he is troubled about anything.

"He hasn't seen Gaby," Danny announced, with an exultation that showed plainly what she had been most anxious about. "He brought up the rock-salt. That's why he drove to the kitchen. Come and see, Mary?"

"I'd rather see you two come and eat your suppers," I said.